


The Story of the Space Shuttle

by MrToddWilkins



Series: Space stuff [1]
Category: Meta - Fandom, NASA RPF
Genre: Epic Length, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Please Don't Hate Me, Please Don't Kill Me, actually probably a lot more, bad formatting, we’re talking potentially a million words here, yep definitely a lot more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 161,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrToddWilkins/pseuds/MrToddWilkins
Summary: ALT:Chapters 2-8STS-6:Chapters 9-25STS-7:Chapters 26-?





	1. Disclaimer

**Didn’t this already get posted and removed?**

Yes,but the guy who writes the source material gave me permission to post here.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The permission:
> 
> Of course you can. - Good idea.
> 
> Ares67
> 
> Sent to: Finn Mac Doreahn on: Today at 12:58 AM
> 
> (that’s my other username)


	2. ALT:prologue

On November 17, 1783, King Louis XIV of France had provided the Montgolfier brothers with two condemned prisoners from the Bastille. Most of the late 18th century physicians were in agreement that if a man were to step inside the rickety gondola suspended below the brothers’ 72-foot-long balloon and allow himself to be carried aloft he would surely die of catastrophic hemorrhaging. As the volunteers were less than forthcoming the King nominated two convicts.

At the last minute, in a moment of bravado worthy of any latter-day astronaut, a local man declared that if this was to be the first time that a human would fly, it should surely not be a convicted murderer. Monsieur Rozier proceeded into the gondola and after making certain that the ropes were safely secured to the ground, his 180-pound payload was sent aloft to an altitude of 80 feet. Less than two hundred years later, on April 12,1981, a payload of 180,000 pounds was strapped to 4.3 million pounds of high explosive and propelled with two equally hardy adventurers, to an orbital altitude of 145 nautical miles.

The history of aviation has spanned just more than two centuries and has induced such an incredible assortment of heroic travelers that it required a new term to enter the lexicon of the English language. American writer Tom Wolfe immortalized the “Right Stuff” in his book of the same name. In the annals of aviation, the Space Shuttle has earned a place alongside the Montgolfier’s balloon, the Wright Brother’s Flyer, Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, the Russian spacecraft Vostok, and the United States’ Apollo.

The shuttle’s story dates back to before WWII, when an Austrian engineer named Eugene Sänger put pen to paper and outlined the principals of hypersonic flight. Sänger had written a report for the Luftwaffe which proposed a rocket plane with a dry-weight of 20 tons and a payload capability of 80 tons. To get such an enormous load off the ground presented the same problems as it does today. Sänger suggested a straight takeoff track over three kilometers long. His subsequent report ended up on the desks of, amongst others, Wernher von Braun, General Dornberger and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. At the end of the war, Sänger’s ideas were part of the treasure trove appropriated by the allies and, despite Stalin’s best efforts to locate the Austrian genius, Sänger lived on to a ripe old age in the West.

By the 1950’s Wernher von Braun and many of his team had integrated into American society and were working towards their dream of colonizing space. Due to the frosty political climate prevailing between the West and the Soviet Union, von Braun was encouraged to spend his efforts on building bigger and faster ways to deliver a nuclear warhead to Moscow. The ICBM became the preferred big money project, but Sänger’s work was not forgotten and the possibilities of hypersonic winged flight continued to be explored in the high California desert. By 1959 the culmination of these efforts produced the X-15 rocket plane which flew to altitudes of over 60 miles and tested the concepts of winged reentry as well as the idea of using ejectable fuel tanks. The X-15 landed as a glider back on the runway at Edwards Air Force Base under the control of the pilot.

On April 12, 1961, the rules of the game changed when the Soviets launched a Vostok capsule to an altitude of 203 miles. Yuri Gagarin had been strapped on top of an R-7 ballistic missile. Sputnik had proven three years earlier that the Soviets could drop a bomb anywhere they wanted, but Vostok 1 proved that a man could survive the dramatic and punishing forces atop a missile. At this moment winged spaceflight took a giant leap backwards. The Space Race was fully engaged and missiles were now the order of the day. Reusability was quickly forgotten. For the next decade the hypersonic revolution wallowed in the backwaters of obscurity in the deserts of California.

Just as April 12, 1961, had been a bad day for winged spacecraft, July 20, 1969, was a good day. As history will never forget on that day two men stepped out on to the lunar surface and effectively ended the space race in dramatic style. In a moment of incidental irony it is often forgotten that the first of those men, Neil Armstrong, had spent most of his early career as one of a handful of test pilots flying the X-15, at that time the world’s only winged spacecraft.

Less than two weeks after Apollo 11’s crew returned to a triumphant welcome, Wernher von Braun made a presentation to the Space Task Group about the future of manned spaceflight. In von Braun’s version of things the enormous Saturn V and a newly proposed winged Space Shuttle would combine forces. These two heavy lifters would be used to build space stations, moon bases and even permanent settlements on Mars by 1986.

This wildly optimistic vision would be stymied by everything from politics to oil embargoes. President Nixon wanted a cheaper an less audacious plan that did not include the continuing production of the mighty Saturn rockets and in which these lofty goals would be considerably restrained. Reusability became the name of the game and the only way to make a spacecraft reusable was to put wings on it. Suddenly the pilots of the Mojave were pushed into the limelight.

On August 12, 1977, two men, ex-Apollo 13 astronaut and Edwards test pilot Fred Haise and co-pilot Gordon Fullerton sat at the controls of the first Space Shuttle, named Enterprise. Carried aloft to an altitude that would have Monsieur Rozier gasping for breath, Haise and Fullerton launched the 90-ton glider away from its carrier plane and into the history books. In just less than six minutes Haise and Fullerton brought the 180,000 pond glider to a perfect landing on the desert runway.

After a handful of similar test flights, which Haise and Fullerton shared with another X-15 pilot, Joe Engle (and his crewmate Richard Truly), the Enterprise was shipped off to Florida. A series of further tests ensued which saw the orbiter mated to its fuel tanks and strap-on boosters.

On April 12, 1981, two astronauts climbed aboard the fully fueled and integrated Space Transportation System, Columbia STS-1. John Young, a veteran of both Gemini and Apollo, and Robert Crippen had been selected to take the shuttle on its first full flight into space. Twenty years earlier on the same day a Russian missile had propelled 10,395 pounds into space using 1.1 million pounds of thrust. Gagarin flew 25,000 miles in 108 minutes. On this day 180,000 pounds would ride atop 7.7 million pounds of thrust, an increase in engine and fuel efficiency of over 300 percent. However, this crew would be landing on a runway after traveling over a million miles in a little over 54 hours.

Today the Space Shuttle still stands at the top of the list as the greatest flying machine ever built. The wildest imaginings of Monsieur Rozier could not have envisioned the Space Shuttle, and yet, only 150 years after his immortal flight Eigen Sänger’s sketches laid the foundation for the reality we know today.


	3. ALT:background

When NASA decided at the end of the Apollo Moon program that it needed something new for future space travel, various concepts were proposed – and from those emerged the Space Shuttle. North American Rockwell was given the prime contract in July 1972 to build five Space Shuttle orbiters, the first one being a prototype to be used for glide and ground tests. Work to build the first shuttle orbiter, OV-101, began on June 4, 1974, at the Rockwell’s Air Force Plant 42, Site 1, in Palmdale, California. Final assembly of all the components that came from various subcontractors started in March 1975. On August 25, 1975, the final assembly was complete.

At Christmastime 1975, readers of the trade journal Astronautics & Aeronautics saw an arresting color photo on the cover of the January 1976 issue. It showed what was unmistakably an airplane in final assembly within a hangar – and which equally unmistakably was a Space Shuttle orbiter. “Space Shuttle 1976,” read the cover’s caption; “Into Mainstream Development.” The wings and vertical fin were in place, along with much of the fuselage. This was OV-101, which later that year – as a result of the mail campaign organized by fans of the popular Star Trek TV series– was to receive the name “Enterprise.”

The Trekkers had only forgotten one thing – Enterprise was not built to fly in space like the “real” starship. But nonetheless she had a useful career in flight and ground test. In September 1976, amid considerable ceremony, she was rolled out for public display, thus showing dramatically that the shuttle program indeed was building hardware.

During the summer of 1976, shortly before the rollout, OV-101 had served as the test vehicle for the Horizontal Ground Vibration Test, conducted in Palmdale. Earlier vibration testing had used an accurate structural model, at one-quarter scale, with water in its External Tank to simulate liquid oxygen and air replacing the very lightweight liquid hydrogen. The new tests gave engineers their first opportunity to verify their mathematical models by taking data on the structural dynamics of an actual flight orbiter.

Although OV-101 was not identical to the configuration planned for OV-102, the differences were well understood and accounted for in the model. For instance, Enterprise did not have provisions for mounting real OMS pods, but used structural boilerplate replicas, and the vertical stabilizer was built-up using skin and stringers as opposed to the integrally machined structure of OV-102. The payload installed in the orbiter during the HGVT was the 10,000-pound Development Flight Instrumentation package that would be used during the atmospheric flight tests.

There were two test configurations, one with the orbiter supported in a “free-free” condition to simulate reentry and landing, and the other with the orbiter rigidly attached to the ground at its External Tank supports to represent the configuration during ascent. Tests were also conducted with the payload bay doors opened to simulate an on-orbit configuration. Ferry locks were used to secure the aerodynamic control surfaces during testing, mainly to prevent unexpected damage. The tests vibrated this vehicle at frequencies from 0.5 to 50 hertz, determining natural or resonant frequencies and their damping. Other measurements determined frequency response at the locations of sensors used for guidance and control. Following the completion of the tests, minor modifications were made to the vehicle prior to the public rollout.

The following year Enterprise would be used for Approach and Landing Tests at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It would be flown piggyback atop the SCA Boeing 747, later to be used to ferry orbiters from coast to coast, and released, gliding back to a landing as if returning from space. Following the ALT flights, OV-101 continued to find useful roles, first in structural tests and then in exercising the shuttle’s launch facilities, and for a short while even in “diplomatic” service.

———-

The Space Shuttle system consists of the orbiter, a large liquid-fuel tank that will not be recoverable, and two reusable solid-fuel boosters. The shuttle is designed to be used as many as one hundred times on missions ranging from an average of seven days to as much as a month, with a two-week turnaround and preparation period for the next flight.

In the words of James Fletcher, “Any discussion of future space initiatives must start with the Space Shuttle, the key to opening up near space to quick, easy, and economical access. With the Space Shuttle, operations to and from low-altitude Earth orbit – for both manned and unmanned exploration, science and applications – will become routine and relatively inexpensive.”

NASA and the Pentagon are already pushing Congress and the President for funds to construct two or three more shuttles, but both agencies are beginning to meet increased opposition, led by Walter Mondale. Opponents say that the shuttle will be used to “make work” and thus to spend increased money on space exploration. No small part of the questions are concerned with the shuttle’s ability to be used militarily, examining up-close Soviet spy satellites and even (though the Pentagon denies this) as a nuclear bomber.

Regardless, the shuttle promises a tremendous diversity of missions. NASA has reportedly come up with over five hundred possibilities, including satellite placement, maintenance, repair, and retrieval; placement of scientific labs in orbit; establishing an optical telescopic observatory above the atmosphere will for the first time be feasible; and delivery and construction of powered space vehicles for missions to deep space.

The reported cost will be in the neighborhood of ten million dollars per mission, according to NASA estimates, even though the agency quoted a price of around twenty million to a European consortium which is working on a manned laboratory designed to be placed in orbit by the shuttle. This is still in marked contrast to the average of thirty million per throw-away rocket launch at present.

The Enterprise will not be the first shuttle to go into orbit, but will be used to make the necessary atmospheric flight tests. The second orbiter, OV-102, will make the first orbital flight in March 1979, if everything goes according to schedule. The Enterprise will probably make her first spaceflight sometime in 1983.

————

At one point, it was considered feasible to fit turbofans to the orbiter to enable it to fly from place to place under its own power, but this idea was eventually dropped when it was calculated that the spacecraft’s wings generated insufficient lift to provide the required range with the relatively small quantity of fuel it could carry.

In February 1974 NASA deleted its requirement for air-breathing jet engines on the orbiter. A new review of overall shuttle requirements, issued the following month, made no mention of such engines whatsoever. The orbiter now was a glider and would remain so. NASA was faced with the question of how to conduct the atmospheric flight tests, as well as how to ferry the orbiter from a remote landing location back to the launch site.

In anticipating the use of a carrier, NASA needed the largest airplane it could get, and its first thoughts were of the C-5A cargo aircraft. This appeared readily available because the Air Force might provide on from its existing fleet, as part of its cooperation with NASA on the Space Shuttle. By contrast, a Boeing 747 would have to be purchased, which would add cost. In August 1973 NASA awarded a $1 million study contract to Lockheed, builder of the C-5A. In October a similar contract went to Boeing, to examine the possible use of a 747.

Of particular concern was whether the orbiter could separate cleanly from the back of the carrier without striking its tail surfaces. John M. Conroy, who had developed the Boeing Stratocruiser-derived Pregnant Guppy and Super Guppy used to transport Saturn rocket stages during the Apollo program, stepped in with a similarly grandiose proposal for an entirely new shuttle carrier aircraft called “Virtus,” Latin for “courage.”

“Virtus” was to carry the orbiter – or alternately, other oversized payloads such as External Tanks – between twin fuselages, beneath the wing. During flight testing the orbiter could be dropped in flight as if it were a bomb. Nowadays Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic uses a similar design for launching the “VSS Enterprise.” With a wingspan of 450 feet and a length of 280 “Virtus” would dwarf a 747, which had a span and length of 196 and 232 feet, respectively.

Conroy expected to use a cockpit and forward fuselage of a C-97, The Air Force’s version of his beloved Stratocruiser, to eliminate the high costs of developing a new design. He also expected to use landing gear taken from surplus B-52 bombers. Even so, this craft would take two years for construction and six months for flight test and certification. As an aircraft of entirely novel type, it carried the risk of cost overruns and schedule delays. By contrast, the C-5A and 747 were known quantities, and NASA preferred to choose one or the other.

By mid-April 1974 NASA had apparently decided on using the C-5A and, on April 24, George Low wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Air Force, John l. McLucas, outlining the plan. A week later the Air Force agreed in principle. But analysis showed that risk existed for flying the orbiter from the back of the C-5A. The T-shaped tail, with the horizontal stabilizer high atop the vertical fin, produced aerodynamic effects that inherently would cause the aircraft to pitch toward the orbiter during separation.

A C-5A pilot could prevent a collision with the tail with a large and carefully timed movement of the controls, but if this was not done properly, the collision indeed would take place – and could shear off the horizontal stabilizer.

The 747 was much safer. It lacked a T-shaped tail; its tail showed a conventional configuration, with horizontal stabilizers mounted to the fuselage, below the orbiter, and a vertical fin standing alone. Its aerodynamics was far more favorable for air launch. The pilot would not need to take sudden evasive action to prevent collision. Yet if the orbiter did collide with the fin (the horizontal stabilizers being below and out of the way), the consequence would not be catastrophic. The 747 could lose a large portion of this fin and still return safely.

The 747 had other advantages. Carrying the orbiter, it had an estimated range of 2,320 nautical miles, enough for a nonstop transcontinental flight. Some hopeful souls even argued that it could reach the mainland from Hawaii with the orbiter, though this proved not to be true. Still, the C-5A had much less range and would require inflight refueling. The standard C-5A was equipped for this, but there was no experience in refueling it with an orbiter on its back. Hence it would be necessary to develop this experience by flying a C-5A with a dummy orbiter. The 747 avoided this problem.

The 747 had a further safety advantage in that the presence of the orbiter was most destabilizing while mated, allowing flight tests of this reduction in stability prior to flights with actual air launch. This was not possible with the C-5A, for its greatest destabilization occurred just after separation. Again, this difference resulted from the dissimilarity between the two airplanes’ tail shape.

The 747 could use shorter runways than the C-5A, if an engine were to fail during takeoff. The 747 could mount engines of greater power to increase the air-launch attitude, for better realism of the orbiter flights that were to simulate return from space. Carrier aircraft were expected to see extensive use, at a time when people expected to fly the shuttle up to sixty times per year. This gave a further advantage to the 747, for it had a structural life of sixty thousand hours while the lifetime of the C-5A wing was no more than twelve thousand. This reflected the fact that commercial 747s flew every day, whereas the military C-5A flew less frequently.

Aside from all of that, it was the availability of low-cost used 747 aircraft, and the relative scarcity of C-5As, that finally drove the selection of the Being aircraft. After being informed of possible Air Force restrictions on the use of the C-5As, NASA decided that it was easier to have complete control over their destiny and own the SCA than it was to compete with military priorities.

The decision, the choice of carrier aircraft, came from within NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. In May 1974 the center director, Christopher Kraft, wrote to William Schneider in Washington, the Acting Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight: “Dear Bill: This letter requests authorization for NASA Johnson Space Center to purchase a Boeing 747 aircraft.”

On June 13 the Space Shuttle Program Office gave a briefing to the NASA/DOD Space Transportation System Committee, comparing the C-5A and 747 and recommending the latter. This committee concurred in the choice. On the next day, NASA Associate Administrator George M. Low saw this briefing, and he gave approval to Kraft’s request of a month earlier. The procurement went through quickly, on July 18, 1974, with NASA paying $15.6 million for a used Boeing 747-123 of American Airlines (registration N9668, msn 20107). The aircraft was the 86th plane off the 747 production line, and had been delivered to American on October 29, 1970. It had logged 8,999 hours during 2,985 flights, mostly on long-haul flights between New York and Los Angeles. NASA did not name it but merely gave it a new civil registration number, N905NA. Its commercial markings remained plainly visible during subsequent years in the space program.

The technical community expressed calm assurance that a mated ferry flight program was a feasible undertaking. The separation of the two vehicles in flight did not produce the same response. The Space Shuttle already had two parallel separations to contend wit – separating the SRBs from the ET, and jettisoning the ET from the orbiter. Both required knowledge of the aerodynamic effects when the vehicles were in proximity, and a great deal of wind tunnel time had been spent studying the separation maneuvers. Additional tests now had to be accomplished to understand the separation effects of the 747 and the orbiter, although the fact that this would happen at subsonic speeds greatly simplified matters.

Structural clearance was the initial concern, but computer simulations revealed that the vortex wake of the SCA might present a larger issue. Wake vortices are narrow zones of extremely severe turbulence that trail for miles behind an airplane’s wingtips. They are particularly strong when the airplane is large. Separation was to be accomplished by the mated vehicles entering a dive to increase airspeed, followed by the 747 reducing power and deploying spoilers to reduce lift and increase drag. Such a configuration was necessary to create the relative motion required to aerodynamically drive the two vehicles apart. Unfortunately, this also resulted in a near maximum vortex wake condition since the SCA was now configured, essentially, in a landing configuration.

Additional wind tunnel tests were scheduled at Langley, and during August 1974 this soon to be modified SCA 747 contributed to aviation safety by conducting thirty wake vortex research flights using various combinations of wing spoilers in an attempt to reduce wake vortices. Smoke generators, attached to the 747’s wingtips and aft fuselage, made vortices visible. A Lear Jet and an Air Force T-37 jet trainer, flying as chase aircraft, flew close to the danger zones.

Tests without the 747’s wing spoilers deployed produced violent “upset” problems for the T-37 at a distance of approximately three miles, and minor disturbances could be felt at distances as great as ten miles. With two spoilers deployed on the 747’s wing panels, the T-37 could fly at a distance of three miles and not experience difficulties. The results of the SCA tests, complementing a 1973/1974 joint NASA-FAA wake vortices study with a Boeing 727, led to shorter spacing between landings and take-offs, which, in turn, helped alleviate air-traffic congestion.

Subsequently, the 747 was used for additional Space Shuttle tests – a Lockheed F-104 from Dryden was positioned near the 747 wing and both vehicles flew a simulated separation maneuver. When the 747 reached appropriate conditions for separation, the F-104 pulled away and replicated the planned orbiter maneuver following separation. The test confirmed that adequate clearance between the 747 vortex wake and the orbiter flight path would be maintained. The tests revealed that although the separation maneuver would need to be flown very precisely, there were no major technical reasons not to proceed with the atmospheric flight tests.

Because the orbiter was to be mounted in front of the vertical fin, it reduced that fin’s effectiveness. To restore the diminished stability of the 747, designers crafted rectangular fins, ten by twenty feet, to fit on the ends of the horizontal stabilizers. Called “vertical endplates,” these devices had a drag strut connecting to the upper surface of the horizontal stabilizers. Wind-tunnel tests at the University of Washington, close to Boeing’s main plants, verified their usefulness and – though developed as removable structures – these vertical endplates were never removed from the SCA.

In addition, Boeing won a $30 million contract from Rockwell to carry through the 747’s physical modifications. The work, which took place at the 747’s production facilities near Everett, Washington, was started on August 2, 1976.

The commercial 747 had been built to carry passengers or air cargo on a strong deck within the fuselage. The fuselage proper withstood internal cabin pressure and external aerodynamic forces, but it most certainly had not been built to support the weight of a 150,000-pound orbiter. The fuselage of NASA’s new jet therefore had additional bulkheads installed, for extra strength. In accordance with design principles dating to the 1930s, the 747 used “stressed skin” construction. Its loads, weights, and stresses were not only borne by the internal framework but were carried in part by the aircraft skin, which served as a major structural element in its own right. This skin was reinforced in critical areas, with overlays of sheet aluminum being riveted into place.

The 747 longitudinal trim system was modified to permit two degrees more trim in order to counteract a nose-up tendency cause by the downwash off the orbiter wings onto the 747 horizontal stabilizers. Additionally, most of the lower (main) deck interior was stripped, although a number of seats were retained to transport support personnel on ferry missions. A slide escape system was also provided, so that the Boeing’s flight crew could abandon ship if things went badly awry.

The cockpit received controls and displays needed for the air launch and ferry missions. These included a sideslip indicator because the 747 had a tendency to yaw when mated with the orbiter. A load measurement system was installed to record the attach forces between the two vehicles during the mated portion of each flight. Load cells instrumented to measure axial and shear forces were located on each of the three attach struts. This data was evaluated in real-time and used as part of the criteria for approving separation during the first tail-cone-off flight. Displays and controls for the Separation Monitoring and Control System (SMCS) were added at the pilot stations, and an orbiter-to-ground S-band relay link and SCA-to-orbiter intercom were also carried. Other new equipment included L-band telemetry and C-band transponders.

An additional modification took the form of a mass inertia damper installed in the 747’s forward fuselage. This apparatus consisted of a 993-pound mass that shifted position laterally by means of rollers set into the cabin floor. Shifting of then mass damped out oscillations caused by air flowing over the orbiter and inducing turbulence across the Boeing’s tail.

The orbiter would be carried on top of the 231-foot long 747 fuselage, mounted to struts at three points – one forward and two aft – that matched the socket fittings intended for attaching the External Tank during ascent. The orbiter mated location on the SCA was selected based on static stability and control, required structural modification, weight, and mission performance. Ballast was carried by the SCA in standard 747 cargo containers in the forward cargo compartment to ensure center-of-gravity limits were not exceeded. This ballast was adjusted for each ferry flight based on which orbiter (each had a different empty weight) was being carried, and any payloads that were installed in the orbiter.

The forward struts, which had the shape of an inverted V, came in two varieties:

\- a telescopic orbiter forward support assembly to be used during atmospheric flight tests. This was a bipod consisting of two tubes, each 13 feet long, with an adjustable drag strut on the aft-side of each tube to support the bipod after orbiter release. The orbiter would be mounted at a six degree angle-of-attack using this support, making separation a little easier.

\- a fixed orbiter forward support assembly for use during ferry missions. This was also a bipod, consisting of two 8.5-foot long tubes, but without the drag struts. The orbiter would be mounted at a three degree angle-of-attack using this support, providing less drag during ferry flights.

Rear orbiter supports, called aft support assemblies, were mounted atop the aft fuselage. Each consisted of a drag strut twelve feet long and a vertical strut 4.5 feet long. The right-aft support was fitted with a non-adjustable 4.8-foot side strut, and the left-aft support was fitted with dual non-load-bearing adjustable side snubbers.

These structural modifications added some 11,500 pounds to the empty weight of NASA’s 747. It therefore was given a stronger and more capable rudder control. In addition, the extra weight demanded more power from the plane’s engines, which therefore went into the shop for their own improvements. The four Pratt & Whitney JT9D-3A engines were converted to the JT9D-7AHW configuration, increasing available power from 43.500 pound-force to 46,950 pound-force. They also were modified for water injection. This sprayed water into the engines’ hot internal airflow during takeoff, cooling the air and making it denser so as to burn more fuel. Water injection promised additional takeoff thrust for use in ferry missions, when the SCA would carry both the orbiter and a full load of fuel.

The maximum airspeed of an SCA was Mach 0.6 (250 knots), typical cruise altitude during a ferry mission was 13,000 to 15,000 feet, and the maximum ferry range was 1,150 miles. Without an orbiter attached, the aircraft was able to attain altitudes of 24,000 to 26,000 feet and had a range of 6,300 miles. The minimum crew carried by an SCA during ferry missions was two pilots and two flight engineers, although only one flight engineer was required when not carrying an orbiter. N905NA had an empty weight of 318,053 pounds. The maximum weight at takeoff was 710,000 pounds, and maximum landing weight was 600,000 pounds.

The work was completed early in December 1976. The 747, well modified, flew on a short hop from Everett to Seattle’s Boeing Field, for a flight-test program that ran through the Christmas holidays. On January 14, 1977, Boeing turned the SCA over to Rockwell for acceptance testing. Upon completion of weight and balance checks and another limited flight test series, the aircraft was flown to Edwards Air Force Base and handed over to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center.


	4. ALT:rollout

The rollout of a new aircraft is somewhat like the entrance of a queen, and NASA was ready to celebrate with a brass band and plenty of red, white, and blue bunting. In keeping with the Bicentennial, the orbiter was to be christened “Constitution”. But one well-connected space buff, Richard Hoagland had other thoughts. Hoagland had worked as a science advisor within Walter Cronkite’s organization at CBS and was intimately associated with the fans of the TV series Star Trek. He, as well as many others within the community, considered that OV-101 should be called “Enterprise,” after the starship, and persuaded his fellow Trekkers to bombard the White House with a hundred thousand letters that demanded this name.

Here indeed was the voice of the people, a voice that President Gerald Ford could not ignore. Within NASA, some officials disliked that name, as it suggested a link between the shuttle program and the television series. Others supported it, asserting that it would give the program ready recognition. The final choice, however, was Ford’s. On September 8, 1976, he had a 45-minute meeting with NASA Administrator Dr. James C. Fletcher and gave his assent.

The name “Enterprise,” illustrious in U.S. naval history, has been given to the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,to a World War II carrier,and to an American frigate in the Revolutionary War. The name “Constitution” has met with objections that the shuttle is considered an international effort in which several countries would participate.

Referring to the Star Trek letter campaign, Aviation Week magazine commented on the “power of an aroused involved public – especially in an election year.” The Washington Star in an editorial said it was “pathetic” that the public desire for drama in outer space had not been killed by the mundane discoveries on Mars, Venus, and the Moon, and predicted that “nothing exciting will happen in the real-life Enterprise,” even though the naming incident confirmed a public desire “to associate space with adventure and suspense.”

————

The rollout took place on Constitution Day, September 17, 1976, just before 11:00 a.m. PDT. Two thousand people showed up, some of them driving from Los Angeles along the Antelope Freeway. Morning mist was in the air along that route; mountains stepped into the distance in tiers, successively hazier and less distinct. Smog and drizzle had threatened for several days to spill over into the high desert from the Los Angeles basin, but on rollout morning the weather at Palmdale was ideal – clear, light wind and comfortably warm.

Three-level workstands had been pressed into service as camera platforms for still, motion picture and television cameramen behind the invited guest seating area. Others of the 185 newsmen covering the rollout sat in the press section near where Orbiter Vehicle 101 came to a halt behind a star-spangled tractor. Nearby the reentry-smudged Apollo 14 Command Module sat on a dolly as a link in the evolution of spacecraft.

Special guests that morning included Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who was flanked by several members of the show’s cast – actors Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. They all had very gratified smiles as the orbiter, white and black with the name “Enterprise” prominent on its side, came into view from behind a wall and the Air Force band of the Golden West, in fact, played the Star Trek theme music.

————

The Space Shuttle “is probably the best investment the United States Congress has ever made,” U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater (R-Arizona) said, speaking before the assembled crowd. “We are on the verge of a new era,” the senator said. “The Space Shuttle will present us a remarkable opportunity to explore the new frontier of space for the benefit of all mankind.”

Goldwater was one of several dignitaries who spoke at the unveiling of the Enterprise, the first reusable Space Shuttle vehicle. Keynote remarks were made by NASA Administrator James Fletcher, who called the event “a very proud moment” for the agency. “With the Space Shuttle program, Americans and the people of the world have made the evolution to man in space – not just astronauts,” he said.

The administrator noted that while shuttle crews must meet rigorous standards, “passengers can qualify with normal good health.” The shuttle is “the natural progression” of all our space programs and insures that “man has entered the environment of space permanently,” Fletcher said. This reusable transportation system, which combines the best features of spacecraft and aircraft, “will carry the technology of many countries to benefit this nation and all the nations of the world,” the NASA administrator concluded.

U.S. Rep. Olin E. Teague (D-Texas), chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, told the group, “Today marks a major milestone in our space program. This is the first in a fleet of space vehicles which will enable us… to greatly enhance life here on Earth.” Teague praised both government and industry efforts for making possible, for the first time, “low cost, routine access to space.”

The rollout program was opened by John F. Yardley, Associate NASA Administrator for the Office of Space Flight, who acted as master of ceremonies. U.S. Senator John V. Tunney (D-California) welcomed the guests to California. He called the shuttle “the gem of American space exploration for the next decade” and noted the practicality as well as the “challenge and adventure” of the program. Willard F. Rockwell, Jr., board chairman of Rockwell International, predicted “one of the most exciting chapters in American history” in the productive use of space that the shuttle would make possible.

Following a local welcome by U.S. Rep. William M. Ketchum (R-California), special guests were introduced. These included from JSC, Director Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., program officials Robert F. Thompson, Aaron Cohen and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, and ALT crewmen Fred W. Haise, Joe H. Engle, Charles G. Fullerton and Richard H. Truly.

When all the speeches were over and the band had packed away their instruments, Enterprise became a backdrop for hundreds of you-take-my-pictures, I’ll-take-yours tableaux. Spectators were surprised at the orbiter’s size. With a length of 122 feet and a wingspan of 78 feet it is about as large as a DC-9 airliner. People were free to walk beneath it and touch it.

The scene was repeated the following day on a much larger scale as Enterprise was rolled out of the hangar again and parked on the ramp for the general public and for Rockwell International employees. Meanwhile, work crews were already relocating telephone poles and Joshua trees in preparation for the overland move of OV-101 from Palmdale to Dryden Flight Research Center in January 1977.


	5. ALT:preparations in California

Late in January 1977 Enterprise was mounted to a multi-wheel trailer, supported at the ET fittings. Combined weight of the orbiter and transporter was 220,000 pounds. A diesel tractor was to tow it along back roads that spanned the more than 30 miles distance between Plant 42 and Edwards AFB at speeds from three to five miles per hour. The trip called for more than clearing the route of traffic; power lines had been relocated, while street signs were mounted on hinges that allowed them to fold beneath the wings.

A few special gravel roads for the shuttle were constructed near Dryden, providing a shortcut around Rosamond Lake. One of these, an extension of Division Street on government property, was crossing over an archeologically interesting prehistoric Indian campsite. A line of telephone poles had prevented the road from being built around the site, so – after preliminary evaluation and removal of some artifacts – construction crews had put compressed granite under the asphalt road, protecting the site from damage. Both the Corps of Engineers and the archeological community kept records of the location of the prehistoric campsite, so that it could be fully investigated in the future.

Johnson Space Center’s Roundup reported on February 4, 1977:

“ _The real spaceship Enterprise made its first voyage January 31, along desert highways from Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, to nearby Edwards Air Force Base. The overland trip took place without any major problems and thousands of interested citizens ignored freezing temperatures and lined public roads along the route to get a look at the big bird._

_The only real slowdown during the 13-hour move occurred when a road sign which was supposed to be removable wouldn’t budge. A road engineer produced a chain saw but couldn’t get it started. Someone then tried to use an axe on the sign. Finally, the saw was fixed up and the sign removed._

_The trip began at 5:00 a.m. PST when the commercial tractor-type tow vehicle began pulling its big load away from Plant 42. After travelling on plant property for about 1.4 miles, the orbiter rolled out onto right-of-way owned by Los Angeles County Road Department. For 8.5 miles, the spacecraft was hauled along public roads._

_In the early morning hours, hundreds of school children were brought out by their parents before class to view the orbiter as it passed. A busload of senior citizens from a convalescent home also braved the cold weather to see the new workhorse of the Space Shuttle program. Crowds of people lined every intersection along the route. For the last 22 miles of the trip, the orbiter was transported on roads within the confines of Edwards AFB._

_Upon arrival of the spacecraft and its convoy at the boundary of the base, the orbiter was received by former astronauts Maj. Gen. Tom Stafford, commander of the U.S. Flight Test Center at Edwards, and Dr. David R. Scott, director of DFRC.”_

_————-_

__Enterprise was mated to the carrier aircraft during February 7 and 8, 1977, using the Mate/Demate Device at Dryden. The mated vehicle underwent weight, balance, and vibration checks during the morning of February 15, 1977. Enterprise, both when towed from Plant 42 to Edwards and when mounted atop the 747, sported a large fairing or tail cone extending to the rear of the aft fuselage. This smoothed her aft airflow. Without this fairing, that flow would be highly turbulent, buffeting the 747’s vertical fin and making it more difficult for the 747’s flight crew to accomplish the precision maneuvers needed for air launch. This fairing also reduced drag from the orbiter, increasing the 747’s ferry range. During ALT, this drag reduction also helped the orbiter to glide less steeply and to stay aloft longer.

But the shuttle certainly would not fly to orbit with this tail cone. The goal of the ALT program, the focus of her most demanding flights, was that Enterprise had to glide to safe landings with this cone off. Inevitably this meant steeper and more sudden descents, which demanded caution. “We will approach it incrementally,” a Boeing manager told Aviation Week in 1976. “First, some high-speed taxi tests, then a low-speed flight. Then some simulated launches at launch altitude, and if everything is okay, a launch with the cone off.”


	6. ALT:captive-carry tests

Two two-man orbiter crews were chosen by NASA for the ALT flights: Civilian Fred W. Haise, Jr., and Lieutenant Colonel, USAF, Charles Gordon Fullerton, as well as Colonel, USAF, Joe H. Engle, and Commander, USN, Richard H. Truly. Haise was a veteran of Apollo. He had faced life-threatening perils as lunar module pilot of the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, when the explosion of an onboard tank, while en route to the Moon, disabled the spacecraft by knocking out its electrical power. Haise helped save his crew through his close knowledge of electrical systems. He also was an expert on the Lunar Module, which served as a lifeboat and enabled the crew to return safely to Earth. Haise was selected for the astronaut program in April 1966. He was backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 8 and 11, and backup commander for Apollo 16.

Selection of the other three men showed that the torch was being passed to a new generation, for none of them had flown Apollo. Nevertheless, all three were graduates of the Aerospace Research Pilots School at Edwards Air Force Base, with Truly staying on as an instructor. Outstanding aviators seek hazardous duty. Serving with Fighter Squadron 33 in the early 1960s, flying combat jets from the carriers USS Intrepid and Enterprise, he specialized in night carrier landings, which took away normal visual cues. He graduated quickly from test pilot to astronaut, for in November 1965 the Air Force chose him as one of eight men who were to fly the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Following that program’s demise Truly transferred to NASA in September 1969. He was a member of the support crews for all three manned Skylab missions and the U.S.-Soviet ASTP linkup in 1975.

Like Truly, Engle had no spaceflight experience as an Apollo crew member, though he was a member of the astronaut support crew for Apollo 10 and the backup lunar module pilot for the Apollo 14 mission. But this did not stop him from qualifying as an astronaut, for he made sixteen flights in the X-15. He repeatedly topped Mach 5; he also flew three missions that reached above fifty miles in altitude, thus meeting an Air Force criterion that gave him this qualification. This experience was invaluable, for the X-15 was the last winged space plane before the shuttle; its speed and altitude records would not be bettered until the shuttle flew to orbit. As a high-performance aircraft that made unpowered landings, the X-15 also helped Engle for the ALT series.

Fullerton’s career also resembled Truly’s, for he had been a Manned Orbiting Laboratory astronaut, transferring to NASA as well when that program died. He was a member of the support crews for the Apollo 14 and 17 missions. Fullerton held bachelor and master degrees from California Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering. Significantly, he did not come up by flying hot jets or rocket planes. He served in the Air Force with bombers, flying the B-47 for the Strategic Air Command and then working as a bomber test pilot at Wright-Patterson AFB, a major developmental center. It was a long way from Wright-Patt to Edwards; when he qualified for MOL, this showed that his talents were exceptional indeed.

Crew members for the 747 carrier aircraft included pilots Fitzhugh L. “Fitz” Fulton, Jr., and Thomas C. McMurtry, who were joined by flight test engineers Victor W. Horton and Louis E. Guidry, Jr. Fulton, McMurtry and Horton were from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and Guidry was a flight engineer from Johnson Space Center.

Lieutenant Colonel Fitz Fulton retired from the USAF in 1966 after serving 23 years. He was a veteran multi-engine test pilot with wide experience as a launch pilot for the X-15 and manned lifting bodies, as well as on other experimental aircraft flight test programs. Fulton flew over 235 different types of aircraft and flew some 16,500 hours testing most of the USAF bombers and transports developed since 1950. He flew 55 combat missions during the Korean War in the Douglas B-26 Invader, was an XB-70 project pilot for NASA and the USAF and since 1970 was co-project pilot for the Blackbird program, flying the triple-sonic YF-12 research aircraft version.

McMurtry had been flying experimental aircraft for NASA since 1967. As project pilot on the Supercritical Wing, he made the first flight with the new airfoil shape. He flew as co-project pilot on the F-8 Digital Fly-by-Wire aircraft and the Supercritical Wing F-111, and as co-project pilot on NASA’s 990 and C141 multi-engine aircraft. Horton was flight test engineer on the YF-12 at DRFC and had flown as launch panel operator of the B-52 air-launch aircraft. Guidry had flown as test engineer on the C-135 Zero-G studies and the C-130 Earth resources aircraft.

—————-

The mated SCA Boeing 747 amounted to a new aircraft, a heavy one with an unusual shape that had never flown before. Thus, although the standard 747 had accumulated millions of flight hours in routine service with airlines, the mated N905NA had to start again at the beginning, with taxi tests. The plane with Enterprise on its back would not take off and head for the wild blue yonder, at least not yet. Instead, it was to trundle down Runway 04/22, the main concrete runway at Edwards, under power from its engines. These taxi runs would evaluate the technique of setting thrust for takeoff. They would also assess directional stability and control, elevator effectiveness during rotation prior to takeoff, airplane response in pitch, thrust reverser effectiveness, use of the 747’s brakes, and airframe buffet.

Three taxi tests took place with Dryden research pilot Fitzhugh “Fitz” Fulton at the controls, all in the single day of February 15, 1977. The first taxi test reached 76 knots, well below takeoff speed. Fulton then reversed thrust and slowed to 23 knots before applying the wheel brakes. Inspection showed no damage or overheating within the wheel assemblies, and Fulton received permission to turn his plane around and taxi in the opposite direction, at higher speed. This time he reached 122 knots. Fulton evaluated the elevator effectiveness during this run, raising the nose wheel momentarily between 95 and 100 knots. Again he reversed thrust and slowed, applying the brakes at 20 knots as his plane rumbled to a stop.

The third taxi test simulated an aborted takeoff, making good use of the 15,000 feet of runway length. Fulton accelerated to 137 knots, then cut the engines from takeoff power to idle. Pulling back on the controls, he applied elevator and raised the nose to a 5-degree pitch-up. The 747 rotated smoothly; Fulton held the nose wheel off the runway for some 1,500 feet before lowering it again. He then pushed the throttles forward and reversed thrust. This time he carried out a more demanding test of brakes, braking between 49 and 40 knots. He indeed had come close to taking off; the plane would have lifted from the runway at around 145 knots and a pitch angle of 6.5 to 7 degrees.

The tests took place amid the coolness of early morning, for in the California high desert in February, temperatures can be well below freezing. Hence the temperatures of the brakes and wheels never topped 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which was acceptable.

Fulton declared that his 747 responded so well that at times the flight crew could not tell that the orbiter was atop the fuselage, with a weight of 143,600 pounds. “As is oftentimes the case,” he added, the actual carrier aircraft-orbiter combination handled better than what we experienced in the simulator.”

Three days later, on February 18, Enterprise, with no one aboard, was taken aloft for the first time in a two-hour-5-minute-flight to see how the orbiter/747 combination handled. This was seat-of-the-pants flying. “Once we we’re airborne,” said Fulton before the flight, “the thing that will be of interest to all of us is any buffeting from the orbiter on the tail of the 747. If some unusual shaking or vibration levels are encountered during any of the flights, we’ll back off and fly at a previously cleared airspeed.”

The 747 rotated smoothly to a seven-degree pitch and flew off the runway at 142 knots. Fitz Fulton kept the landing gear down until there was no chance of having to land immediately on the dry lakebed. He and his copilot, Tom McMurtry, soon found that stability and other handling characteristics were better than the simulator predictions. Followed closely by chase planes, they climbed to 16,000 feet and performed flutter and autopilot tests. Next came an airspeed calibration with a Cessna A-37, instrumented as a pace airplane, flying alongside.

Cruising at 250 knots, the flight crew evaluated stability and control, while load cells at the orbiter’s supports measured its lift. They descended to 10,000 feet and slowed to 174 knots, for airspeed calibration at a variety of landing gear and flap positions. Fulton made a practice landing approach, finally touching down at 143 knots. He applied the brakes sparingly, allowing the plane to roll to the end of the runway.

This first inert orbiter captive flight obtained information on low-speed performance and handling qualities of the mated crafts and was accomplished almost exactly as planned. The 747 combined with Enterprise handled much closer to the standard 747 than was anticipated. The 747 crew stated they “couldn’t even tell the orbiter was aboard.”

The second such flight took place four days later, February 22, 1977, expanding the envelope to 265 knots at the top altitude, 22,600 feet, and 285 knots at 16,000. At that peak, and again at 16,000 feet, Fulton conducted checks of flutter, airspeed calibration, and stability. The top speed exceeded the target airspeed for air launch, 270 knots. The crew also used a high-power setting, 46,900 pounds of thrust for each engine. They had not planned to do this, but found that they needed the extra power to achieve 265 knots at maximum altitude.

Flight two, the longest in the series, as they stayed in the air for more than three hours, accomplished a series of flutter and stability control tests. During the flight, the two right engines of the 747 were reduced to idle thrust. The rudder demanded greater deflection at reduce airspeed. But even at 120 knots, close to stalling speed, the rudder maintained its effectiveness, preventing sideslip.

Takeoff weight was 625,500 pounds, including the 143,600-pound Enterprise along with fuel for the hours of flight. But standard commercial 747-100 series could take off at a gross weight as high as 735,000 pounds, including up to 350,000 pounds of fuel. “We are flying the airplane at much lower gross weights than a heavyweight 747 would be taking off from L.A. going to London,” said Fitz Fulton. “So we aren’t really taxing the airplane a lot.” Carrying the orbiter “just puts the load in a little different place.”

“Our overall impression, based on the two flights, is that the airplane is handling extremely well,” he added. “We’ve seen a slight increase in the aerodynamic noise and buffeting as the speed had increased, but both conditions still are within the acceptable range. The most important thing we’re trying to do on these first flights is to satisfy ourselves that the combination is aerodynamically stable. We have flown two missions and now need two more to completely clear the flight envelope we want.”

Flight three, on February 22, 1977, concluded the flutter tests and concentrated on stability/control/flight evaluation and airspeed calibration. Stability and control were evaluated by idling the outer right #4 engine on the 747 to simulate an engine failure. “The carrier aircraft is very docile in the simulated engine-out tests,” Fitz Fulton said. “We have more than enough rudder to control engine-out situations, which confirms the preflight predictions.”

The flight crew made shallow dives from altitudes up to 26,000 feet, Maximum speed was 370 knots, well above that planned for separation. At 280 knots, the pilots noticed a considerable increase in buffeting. Fulton later said that “it seems like between 270 and 280 knots, the buffeting sort of takes a quantum jump in intensity.” This appears to have resulted from resonance, with the frequency of eddies in the disturbed airflow, aft of the orbiter, matching a natural frequency of the 747’s tail surfaces.

There was distortion as well; a chase pilot reported seeing skin ripples on the orbiter’s tail cone, again caused by disturbances in the flow. Fortunately, the planned separation speed of 270 knots was below the region of increased buffet and was not expected to produce problems during air launch.

The program had called for six such captive-inert” flights with Enterprise unpowered and unpiloted. But these first three had been so successful that Deke Slayton, the ALT manager, cancelled the last of them. The final two flights were to conduct the maneuvers of an air launch, though without such a launch, for Enterprise was to remain on the carrier’s back.

Flight four took place on the last day of February. Fulton climbed directly to 25,000 feet and pushed over to initiate a series of shallow dives that simulated those of separation. This flight also simulated emergency descent of the mated vehicles and a missed landing approach. The emergency descent was accomplished by reducing the four 747 engines to idle thrust. The missed approach was performed by flying the mated vehicles within 20 feet off the ground, then returning the 747’s four engines to full thrust for a go-around.

Fitz Fulton ended the flight by demonstrating that the mated pair could land on short runways, such as the 7,500-foot strip at NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Center. Fulton aimed his plane carefully and touched down within the first 1,000 feet of the long Edwards runway. Braking moderately, he brought the 747 to a stop at the 5,800-foot mark.

The final flight, on March 2, 1977, conducted complete simulations of two orbiter launch profiles. These called for the 747 to climb to maximum altitude and push over into a shallow dive to accelerate to the 270-knot separation speed. Using the high-power engine settings, Fulton started the first dive at 28,600 feet, the second at 30,100 feet. Descending at an angle of 5.7 degrees, the plane reached maximum speed of slightly above 280 knots.

At this speed, Fitz Fulton cut the throttles to idle and deployed spoilers to the maximum air-brake position. This placed the 747 in a high-drag configuration while the orbiter, angled upward on its mount by six degrees, was generating high lift. This produced rapid vertical separation, in effect, the orbiter dropped the 747. Load measurements at the orbiter’s supports showed a separartion force approaching 0.8 g at conditions of release – as much as anyone wanted. Any increase was likely to cause Enterprise to pitch up, lose forward speed, move rearward, and perhaps strike the 747’s vertical fin.

Fulton approached the runway and touched down in another short-field landing, duplicating that of flight four. “The landings certainly indicate we could go to heavier braking and get into even shorter fields if necessary,” he told Aviation Week.

In all this, Enterprise had been inactive. She had carried no crew, serving merely as an inert aerodynamic mass. Soon it would be time for astronauts to sit in her flight deck. Soon this orbiter would fly on its own.

—————-

Taxi test had taken only a day, in mid-February 1977, while the captive-inert tests, qualifying the 747, had covered no more than the following two weeks. But the ALT plan now called for nearly three months to elapse before astronauts would board Enterprise for the next round of flights. This allowed engineers at Johnson Space Center to refine their computer programs and mathematical models, using data from those tests. Those codes modeled the separation and descent of the orbiter. With them, astronauts training in simulators could achieve greater realism as they practiced and rehearsed.

NASA also used the time to work on the orbiter. It needed additional equipment, further certification of subsystem performance. In particular, the elevon actuators had to go back to the manufacturer for final qualification tests; then they had to this date slipped. Balky APUs were part of the reason; their proof testing took be reinstalled. The schedule called for resumption of flight on May 26, 1977, but longer than anticipated, for they had leaky seals. Meanwhile, astronauts Engle, Fullerton, Haise and Truly continued their practice sessions in the ground simulators and the Gulfstream aircraft.

  
HQ NASA News Release No. 77-116 stated on June 8, 1977:

“The first manned test flight of the Space Shuttle orbiter has been rescheduled from June 9 to no earlier than June 16, 1977, at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California. The exact date is dependent upon successful completion of orbiter ground tests currently underway at Dryden. This flight begins the second phase of the Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests, a program designed to verify the aerodynamics and flight control characteristics of the orbiter while still attached to the 747 carrier aircraft.

The postponement is due to the malfunction of equipment associated with the shuttle orbiter’s auxiliary power system. A leak developed in a fuel pump in one of the three Auxiliary Power Units causing a small amount of APU fuel (hydrazine) to vent overboard. This problem in the APU 2 developed during a mission run of the orbiter APU system, one of the final tests scheduled before the first manned flight. APU 2 will be replaced before another mission run is scheduled at Dryden. This work is expected to take between four and seven days.”

  
Deke Slayton set a date of June 17, but that day brought three new problems: failure of an Inertial Measurement Unit, trouble with two of the four primary flight control computers, and a fault with the ejection seats. These were fixed the following day, June 18, 1977, allowing Haise and Fullerton to board the orbiter as it rested atop its carrier. Most of Enterprise’s onboard systems were operating, including two of three APUs and ammonia boilers in an active thermal control system.

But as the 747 was being towed into position to start its engines, its air-conditioning system sucked in toxic fumes from those boilers’ vent tubes. Fitz Fulton, still the 747 commander, shut the cabin air vents as he and his crewmates donned oxygen masks. The ammonia dissipated, and the mated pair soon was on the runway, ready for takeoff.

Fullerton later said that the height above the ground of the orbiter cockpit gave a spectacular view. Neither he nor Haise could see any part of the 747, which made it feel as if they were flying alone. In fact, they would not do this until the next round of tests. The present, phase II series called for “captive-active” tests, with the orbiter piloted and powered up, while still remaining firmly attached to its carrier.

This first captive-active flight made no attempt to push the envelope. The 747/Enterprise combo lifted off from Edwards at just past 8:06 a.m. PDT. The flight was once around an oval that measured 78 miles on the straight sections and 10 miles through the curves. The mated vehicles were airborne for less than an hour, they flew below 15,000 feet, and did not exceed 180 knots. A DC-3 might have served as a chase plane. Indeed, the cruise speed was so slow that the 747 had to fly with flaps extended. But the crew was not out to break records; they wanted to see how Enterprise would perform in the air. Its working systems included APU, hydraulics, active thermal control, and electrical, the latter using this orbiter’s fuel cells. All performed well.

The orbiter had a split rudder that served as a speed brake, with its two halves splitting open and angling to the sides of the vertical fin. The maximum deflection angle of each panel for 45 degrees, listed as 100 percent speed brake. Use of this brake proved to have a pronounced effect on the big 747, as Haise and Fullerton conducted tests at 60, 80 and 100 percent. Fitz Fulton found that at the last setting, drag was so high that he had to increase the 7474’s engines from cruise to climb power in order to maintain altitude.

In Houston, the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center took primary responsibility for flight operations. The earlier captive-inert flight had been controlled on the scene, at Dryden Flight Research Center, and this was the first time Houston had controlled a Space Shuttle in flight. This called for good real-time communications links, which encountered some interference from a transmitter at Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego, more than 150 miles away. Still, Houston had communicated with astronauts as far away as the Moon. California was much closer.

The second captive-active flight took place ten days later, on June 28, 1977, with astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly at the controls of the orbiter, was designed to simulate the separation maneuver that would be used for the first free flight. Takeoff was at 8:52 a.m. PDT and during the initial climb-out various low-speed flight control system tests were performed by both the Enterprise and the SCA. A high-speed (310 mph) set of flight control system tests were then performed to assess the accuracy of predicted control surface responses and structural characteristics with respect to aerodynamic vibration.

The vehicles then climbed to 22,030 feet for a separation maneuver test. The 747 crew accomplished a pushover and descended at approximately 3,000 feet per minute. The orbiter elevons were positioned as they would be during an actual separation. Following the separation test, the vehicles climbed to 19,300 feet and established a six-degree glide slope to simulate an orbiter autoland mode fly-through. Engle and Truly monitored the Microwave Scanning Beam Landing System to ensure it was performing as expected – it was. After waving off the autoland approach, the vehicles performed a normal landing at Runway 22.

Back on the ground, trouble appeared within an APU. It had a minor leak, but the leak increased as a result of the second flight, with the unit losing both oil and hydrazine fuel. The highly toxic fuel needed removal, which delayed the third flight until late July. Technicians used this time to install a pair of hundred-gallon tanks for hydraulic fluid, change out the #1 and #3 APUs, replace the #5 (spare) onboard computer, and put in new actuators for the main landing gear. This work was accomplished while the orbiter and SCA remained mated in the MDD.

The third and final captive-active flight was flown on July 26, 1977, with Haise and Fullerton in the orbiter for a 7:47 a.m. PDT takeoff. This was a complete dress rehearsal for the first free flight and consisted of once around an oval measuring 84 miles on the straights and 24 miles through the curves. During the climb-out various avionics checks and flight control surface deflections were conducted; again, Enterprise’s APU, hydraulic, power, and cooling systems were powered up.

Soon after takeoff a warning light went on, and Fullerton reported that the temperature on APU 1 “had gone off scale to the overheat side.” He shut it down, not knowing that the problem was with a faulty sensor rather than the unit. The APU later proved to have worked properly. Enterprise continued her flight with two rather than three working APUs.

Using his engines’ maximum thrust, Fitz Fulton drove his 747 above 30,000 feet and pushed over, then cut his engine power and deployed spoilers. His speed increased to 272 knots as he approached the launch point at 25,620 feet, and he reported that he was “launch ready.” Fulton followed this with an approach to Runway 17, which had the microwave landing system, and aborted this approach to land as usual on Runway 22.

As a final touch after landing, while still mated to the SCA, Haise deployed the Enterprise’s landing gear as a final check prior to the first separation. This was the first time these wheels had been deployed during the ALT program. All captive flights revealed no reason not to proceed with the free flights, and the last two tail-cone-on captive-active flights were cancelled.


	7. ALT:free flights

During the week of August 8, 1977, a two-day Shuttle Readiness Review was completed – all conditions were go. Enterprise was ready for free flight. Shortly after 8:00 a.m. on Friday, August 12, 1977, Fitzhugh Fulton and Thomas McMurtry guided N905NA down Runway 22, with astronauts Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton at the controls of Enterprise. Haise had rehearsed the free flight the previous day in a Grumman Shuttle Training Aircraft; actual separation, which could not be rehearsed in advance, was the only way to prove that the Enterprise would lift clearly over the tall vertical tail fin of the SCA.  
  
The SCA strained its engines to carry the 73-ton orbiter as high as possible; initially the heat of the desert air slowed the climb. Fitz Fulton made a routine climb to 30,000 feet and at 8:48 a.m. PDT, while flying at 310 mph, he stabilized his 747 in a pitch-down attitude of seven degrees, calling “launch ready” as he approached launch altitude at 24,100 feet.   
  
Fred Haise immediately fired the explosive bolt that bound the two craft. This brought separation, marked by a sudden thump and a brief sharp upward lurch. “Thanks for the lift,” Haise told the 747 crew as the craft separated. Quickly there was a master alarm. A warning light went on as one of the identical redundant computers on the orbiter blinked out, cutting off flight-control accelerometers, without affecting the flight.  
  
Haise held two degrees of pitch for three seconds, and then banked twenty degrees to the right to clear the 747, which entered a diving turn to the left. Pilots of the T-38 chase planes following the flight assured the crews of the SCA and the Enterprise that they were clear of each other. It quickly became clear that Enterprise was handling well; both pilots reported themselves delighted with the orbiter, which handled in unpowered flight as easily as design engineers had predicted. It was “a lot like flying a Concorde,” according to Haise, and Fullerton described it as a “very crisp, very stable airplane.”   
  
Fred Haise lowered his nose and stabilized at nine degrees of downward pitch. Next came a practice landing flare to check th orbiter’s handling characteristics at low speed. Gliding at 250 knots, he pulled up, raised the nose to eleven degrees of pitch, and executed a series of shallow-banked turns as his speed fell off to 185 knots.  
  
During this flare, Mission Control at JSC made a mistake. Controllers believed the orbiter had remained steady in altitude during the flare and computed its lift-to-drag ratio accordingly. Houston told Haise that this ratio was well below the expectation, which meant that Enterprise would have to land very soon. Actually, the orbiter had plenty of lift, for it had not held level in altitude; it had climbed several hundred feet.   
  
“I climbed some since I pulled up faster,” Haise told Aviation Week. “I could not tell any difference in the vehicle’s response as the speed bled off. Of course, we were not doing any super maneuvers. I was making only small inputs in pitch and was limiting the bank angles to ten degrees. All the time I was doing this, we were slowing down and the vehicle’s response characteristics looked the same.”  
  
Next Enterprise maintained a nine-degree nose down attitude to pick up speed for the approach. Fullerton took the controls and made a ninety-degree turn; Haise made one as well, placing his craft on final approach. But because he had followed the advice of Houston, he expected to drop relatively rapidly while accelerating somewhat slowly. Having more lift-to-drag ratio than Houston expected, Enterprise did no such thing; she stayed high and built speed quickly.   
  
Haise now realized that he was too high and too fast. He used the speed brake and continued to aim for the runway, but he knew he would overshoot. There was nothing he could do. His only choice was to execute the overshoot, staying in the air until his speed could fall off. Haise flared and touched down, 2,000 feet beyond his aim point. Fortunately, Enterprise was using Runway 17, seven miles long as marked on the lakebed, with the lakebed itself providing a further five miles of overrun.  
  
After five minutes and 21 seconds of free flight, Enterprise landed with a very low sink rate of under one foot per second. The speed at touchdown was as planned: 185 knots, or 213 miles per hour – compared to a typical 747 landing speed of 170mph. The orbiter rolled for over two miles, with 100 percent speed brake and minimal use of the wheel brakes.   
  
“I was hot and long,” Haise admitted, “but that was not a big problem. For the first flight we were conservative. We wanted to make sure we got it on the ground and weren’t going to worry about the aim point.” He had used his high speed to hold his craft just a few feet above the runway, settling down softly. The orbiter then threw up a large dust cloud from which the vertical fin continued to protrude. Spectators applauded; Enterprise rolled to a stop and the 747 flew overhead, in what Science writer Curtis Peebles called “an eagle saluting the success of its fledgling.”

The event was carried live on network TV. With temperatures on the ground nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit, as many as 70,000 visitors were present in the Mojave Desert, including a thousand representatives of the news media. Curtis Peebles was among them, reporting for _Spaceflight’s_ January 1978 edition:

_“It starts with a long drive through the Southern California night. The hills and towns speed past merging into the high plains of the Mojave Desert. Long trails of red tail-lights stretch across the desert to the parking lot._

_In the darkness, lights glow. Tiny figures move about. Slowly dawn banishes the stars. The clouds glow purple and red and so day comes to Edwards Air Force Base. You wait: the cars keep coming in a steady stream. Check the cameras and take a few pictures; focus the binoculars and wait._

_Slowly the 747 and the Space Shuttle Enterprise back out of the support tower and move down the taxi way. Two T-38 chase planes wheel overhead; they, too, wait. Slowly, the 747/Enterprise moves to the runway. Crowds gather at every vantage point. They cover the two railroad lines; symbols of another transport system, another time, another frontier. As it sits on the runway, you begin to understand, to believe – it is going to happen._

_The wait is over now; 8:00 a.m.; a cry of thunder echoes across the base. Slowly, deliberately, the 747/Enterprise moves. Picking up speed, the ties with Earth are broken. Trailed by five chase planes, it enters the sky. Binoculars follow their travels. For almost an hour, final checks are made. Suddenly, all is set. The 747/Enterprise comes around. The countdown begins: 10 minutes, 5 minutes, one minute. Numbers running backward to zero._

_Thousands of eyes search for a tiny black speck in the Sun’s glare. Mission Control wishes them a good flight. The 747/Enterprise begins a gentle descent. As the assembled thousands see a glimpse, Fred Haise pushes a square white button which detonates the explosive bolts which join the two planes and begins a new age._

_The radio announces ‘separation’ and applause breaks out. The 747 appears behind it, a thin contrail. At its peak, almost lost against an immense sky, a white wedge. The contrail disperses and you search again; then a black dot materializes, taking form, becoming larger._

_The Enterprise is flying free. You watch it remembering forever these brief moments. That familiar shape, the black nose, the high rudder, the shroud covering the rocket engines – so like an airplane, yet so much more.”_

Gordon Fullerton said after the first free flight: “After Fred hit the separation button, seven explosive bolts released us with a loud kabang, and, as predicted, we went straight up… Before we cleared the tail of the 747 one of our four General Purpose Computers had failed. I saw a big X on one of the displays in front of me, so I was not getting any current information. The procedure for a GPC fail was to pull some circuit breakers and turn off some switches. I referred to a cue card and got very busy… Then I realized, kind of a shock, ‘Hey, wait a minute! We are flying great… I missed the whole first part of the flight.’”

The failed computer had lost synchronization with its fellows, which had voted it out of the system of four primary and one backup GPC. What had produced this loss of synchronization? Avionics specialists spent two weeks operating the computer system under simulated conditions at separation – and traced the problem to a printed circuit board in the faulty machine’s input-output processor. That board had been soldered in a way that proved to be faulty and had transmitted commands erratically. This brought the synchronization problem. Once this single board had been isolated, the avionics group succeeded in duplicating the sequence of events that had brought on the problem. One other circuit board had been soldered using the same methods. It was marked for replacement prior to the next free flight.

————-

That second free flight, flown by astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly, was made on September 13. Engle and Truly were test pilots, possessors of the Right Stuff, ready to blast into the sky with rockets roaring. But they were well aware that much work in flight test calls for nothing more dramatic than to move the stick and rudder pedals in predetermined ways and observe the resulting vehicle motion. They did this during the second flight, moving the controls by computer as well as by hand.

They separated from the 747 and Engle entered a dive, reaching 300 knots. Enterprise was to execute a tight turn, a maneuver that would dissipate excess energy during return from orbit, to reach the runway accurately. The turn indeed was tight, for they banked at 55 degrees. “I went right to 1.8 g in the turn and held that all the way down to below the 200-knot minimum target speed,” Engle said. “The airplane felt very solid all the way through.” He pitched up as he turned; the airspeed fell off to 188 knots. He then stabilized his craft at 195 knots and carried through a second series of manual control tests. Now Truly took over, conducting additional control tests using the computer.

“I was managing the energy so that I could give the aircraft back to Joe at right airspeed, right altitude and the right place in the sky,” said Truly. “We had planned the mission so that I would fly the orbiter down to 2,000 feet, which we felt would be a good place to give Joe plenty of time to get the landing set up. Approaching Runway 15, Engle aimed at a patch of green grass near the edge of the lakebed, a landmark that was easy to spot. After five minutes 28 seconds of free flight, Enterprise again touched down on the dry lakebed. She settled smoothly onto the runway at a measured distance of 680 feet from that target point. Again the orbiter made god use of the length of its landing strip, for it took over a minute to come to a stop, in a rollout that once more exceeded 10,000 feet.

The astronauts reported that the use of ailerons after nosewheel touchdown was not as effective in steering the orbiter as predicted, but other than that, the vehicle had performed well in flight. The most serious problem to come along during the flight was not in either of the flight vehicles:  the radar at Dryden failed 28 minutes into the captive portion of the flight, and almost caused an abort before it was brought back online.

————

Ten days later, on September 23, the third free flight, piloted by Haise and Fullerton, took place on September 23, lasting five minutes 34 seconds. Testing the microwave landing system on Runway 17 originally had been one objective of the second free flight. But a few days after the first flight a tropical storm had swept across the high desert, dumping several inches of unseasonable rain on Edwards. Runoff water had pooled on that runway, flooding some two miles of its length. Since it would take up to three weeks to dry, program officials had decided to switch to Runway 15.  
  
This time Runway 17 was dry, which meant that the third free flight could use the microwave landing system, which was a key element of the shuttle program, for it was to guide orbiters to a runway during their returns from space.  After separation from the 747, Haise and Fullerton executed another tight turn, followed by more tests of response to the aerodynamic controls. “When we completed that,” said Fullerton, “we were very close to the planned eleven-degree glide slope as defined by the microwave landing system, so I pushed over and centered the guidance steering needles.”  
  
The system placed Enterprise under automatic control, with this orbiter rolling suddenly to acquire the exact runway heading. As it lurched, Fullerton inadvertently touched his control stick, causing the system to revert to manual operation. He then reengaged the microwave system, resuming automatic flight. “It was absolutely smooth and was headed right for the advertised aim point on the lakebed,” he told Aviation Week. The automatic system flew the orbiter as it descended from 6,500 to 3,000 feet. Haise then took over, made a flare, and touched down at 187 knots.

—————

The first three free flights were deemed so successful that the final scheduled tail-cone-on flight was cancelled. The original plan of conducting a mated flight with the tail cone off was also scrubbed. During an early captive flight, with the cone on, Fitzhugh Fulton had remarked that his 747 “reminds me of the old B-36 days. The B-36 used to shake like this in turbulence, but this old bird shakes like this all the time.” Engineers hoped to reduce the effects of buffet by installing a yaw damper, a 1,000-pound weight mounted on springs in the 747’s nose. With this big plane rocking in turbulence of the orbiter’s slipstream, this weight tended to oscillate strongly and to help keep the plane’s motions more steady.  
  
Fulton was to fly his 747 at progressively increasing speeds, from 180 knots up to 250, with the latter being faster than the speed for air launch. He also would make a simulated separation. If the buffeting from the mated vehicles became excessive, they could simply abort the flight and land on the lakebed. “We’ll have about twenty minutes for the ground team to look at the data and convince themselves that it is good,” Deke Slayton, head of the ALT program, said. “If they aren’t happy about it, we’ll run another simulated launch and land. But if things are looking good, we’ll go ahead and launch the orbiter.”  
  
So, for the fourth landing test, piloted by Engle and Truly on October 12, Columbus Day, the tail cone covering the three dummy main engines on Enterprise was removed. The orbiter now had the shape of a shuttle returning from orbit. Without the tail cone, glide time was reduced to just two minutes 34 seconds. Engle and Truly took turns with the controls, diving at more than twenty-five degrees while on final approach. A project report summarized what they learned: “The tail-cone-off configuration showed no noticeable differences in handling qualities from the tail-cone-on configuration. Any increase in airframe vibration due to buffet at the aft fuselage was not noticed by the crew. The difference in tail-cone-off performance, however, was spectacular. Lift/drag modulation using both airspeed and speed brakes was much more apparent in the tail-cone-off configuration.”  
  
Engle and Truly flared and landed at 189 knots, which was expected, and with a sink rate of 3.5 feet per second, which was rather high. Previous free flights had used light braking and long runway rollouts, but this time they braked heavily, testing the orbiter’s ability to stop more quickly. This cut some 4,000 feet from previous rollouts, as Enterprise came to a stop a mile after the nose wheel touched down.

———-

The final free flight, with Haise and Fullerton, happened on October 26, 1977, again without the tail cone, and witnessed on the ground by the British heir to the throne, Prince Charles, Enterprise made her last landing, her only one on a concrete runway. The flight plan was simple. As Slayton put it, “We’re going to do absolutely nothing except separate, come in and touch down at 5,000 feet down the runway.” They were to land on Edwards AFB’s Runway 04, 15,000 feet in length. The aim point, one-third of the way on its length, left 10,000 feet for the landing and rollout.

The orbiter separated 51 minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 19,000 feet. During a total of two minutes and one second of free flight, the crew put the vehicle through a series of maneuvers, finding again that the gliding performance of the orbiter was better than predicted. This time however, as the crew set up their final approach, trouble started.

Coming out of the pre-flare, Enterprise was dropping at 334 mph, considerably quicker than planned. As they crossed the runway threshold, they were 20 knots too fast. In an attempt to slow the orbiter, Haise opened the speed brake early, but instead of slowing down, the speed increased, so Haise deployed the landing gear and pitched the nose down to make the runway impact point. Since Enterprise was unpowered, there was no option of making a second pass.

The orbiter rolled sharply to left and right as Haise struggled with his controls.  Then the rear wheels hit the tarmac hard. Instead of dropping her nose, Enterprise suddenly took off again, bouncing twenty feet into the air. Fullerton saw that they were in a Pilot Induced Oscillation (PIO), in which Haise’s own control movements were making things worse. He knew the orbiter could stabilize on its own and told Haise to loosen his grip on the stick. Haise described this as “the normal thing you have to do to stop that sort of thing. So I let go of the stick and it stopped.”

After a few anxious seconds, the orbiter smoothed out and stabilized for the remainder of the rollout, with the nose finally dropping onto the runway. Enterprise had touched down a few thousand feet past the planned mark, bounced, stayed in the air for another 2,000 feet, and then had come down for good. But although Haise and Fullerton had landed hot, with excessive speed, hard braking brought them to a stop with 3,000 feet of runway still in front of them.

A postflight review of flight data indicated that even earlier use of the speed brake would have reduced the airspeed problem. Also, Haise had lowered the elevons, which caused an increase of lift as the ballooning began after touchdown. Further research using other NASA aircraft, especially the F-8 Digital-Fly-By-Wire aircraft, led to correction of the PIO problem before the first orbital flight.


	8. ALT:legacy

Following the ALT flights, technicians reinstalled the tail cone, and drained and purged Enterprise’s fluid systems. The forward attachment strut on the SCA was replaced to lower the orbiter’s cant from six degrees to three, and during mid-November 1977, Fulton and the 747 crew completed a series of four test flights with the orbiter in the ferry configuration. OV-101 was then returned to the NASA hangar at Dryden and modified for upcoming structural tests at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The journey from California to Alabama gave additional verification that the 747 could carry the orbiter on long ferry flights. When Enterprise arrived at Marshall Space Flight Center on March 13, 1978, she was greeted by an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people, including MSFC employees, invited guests and media representatives. As predicted, landing on the short runway at Redstone Arsenal next to Marshall produced no surprises. Five days later about 85,000 people gathered at MSFC to get a close-up look at the Enterprise and a complete External Tank. Plans called for the orbiter and ET, and later two SRBs, to be mated in Marshall’s Dynamic Test Stand.  
  
The Mated Vertical Ground Vibration Tests (MVGVT) were to be carried out inside this mostly-enclosed test facility that had been constructed in 1964 to conduct similar tests on the Saturn V. It had been modified during 1975-1977, enlarging it from 98 by 98 by 360 feet to 98 by 122 by 360 feet to accommodate the winged Space Shuttle instead of the cylindrical Saturn V.   
  
NASA for the first time assembled a complete Space Shuttle – orbiter, external fuel tank, solid boosters – with all elements of proper size. The ET held water rather than liquid oxygen; the propellant in the SRBs used salt in place of oxidizer, rendering it inert. Still, like the rollout at Palmdale, this fully assembled vehicle also offered a glimpse of what would come.  
  
Studies of structural loads were part of this effort; another was to determine the proper placement of flight control sensors. The shuttle’s elements would bend and flex in flight, under their loads, and sensors in the wrong place would respond tp these structural motions, corrupting their measurements of motion along the trajectory. This would lead to false readings, perhaps causing a mission to abort. The solution lay in finding “nodes,” locations where bending was at a minimum. But these could be found only through careful test on a full-sized vehicle, fully representative of the operational shuttle in all dimensions and particulars of structural design.  
  
Initial work, on April 21, 1978, mounted Enterprise to the ET only, with no SRBs. This simulated the configuration following SRB separation. By varying the amount of water in the tank, engineers simulated different propellant levels. They studied vehicle characteristics immediately after separation, midway through flight to orbit, and just before reaching orbit. The LO2 tank contained between 3,450 and 101,000 gallons of deionized water, and the LH2 tank was pressurized but empty. The combined Enterprise-ET weighed 1,200,000 pounds and was suspended by a combination of air bags and cables attached to the top of the test stand.  
  
Tests including the completely assembled, dimensionally correct elements of the Space Transportation System followed from September 1978 to February 1979. The second test configuration added a set of SRBs containing inert propellant to simulate lift-off conditions. The LO2 tank was filled with 140,600 gallons of deionized water, and the test article weight of 4,000,000 pounds was supported by four hydrodynamic stands, two under each booster. Bearings on top of the stands created the floating characteristics desired for the tests. The test in the lift-off configuration was completed on September 15, 1978, and in the burnout configuration on December 5, 1978.  
  
The final test configuration was similar to the second except that the SRBs were empty and the LO2 tank held 101,000 gallons of deionized water. These tests simulated the period of flight just prior to booster separation, and the vehicle was supported using the same system as in the second test series. These tests were completed on February 23, 1979, and cleared the shuttle configuration for spaceflight.  
  
The engineer in charge of the tests, Eugene Cagle, said that the testing “provided detailed understanding of the structural dynamic characteristics of the vehicle. This gives us confidence that the shuttle will withstand the vibratory forces it will encounter during powered flight.”   
  
On March 19, 1979, the NASA barge Poseidon, with Space Shuttle components aboard, pulled out from the Marshall Center dock on the Tennessee River to begin an eleven-day trip to Kennedy Space Center. Onboard were the External Tank used for the MVGVT and two SRB nose cap forward skirt assemblies. The items were to be used at KSC in “Pathfinder” operations – a checkout of movement and assembly fit checks at the VAB – and for training in stacking the Space Shuttle on the Mobile Launcher Platform.

——————

At this point, Enterprise was supposed to have gone back to Rockwell in Palmdale to be refitted as a flight orbiter. But instead, in early 1979, she was loaded aboard the SCA for a flight to Kennedy Space Center – for fit tests only. Although she had been constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, having completed the series of ALT glide landings, at that time OV-101 may have been the only shuttle that had flown. But always the bridesmaid, Enterprise could not fly in space. The first orbiter was deemed too heavy and outdated for space duty.  
  
Several things convinced NASA to change its plan. As OV-101 was being built, numerous lessons were learned regarding the orbiter’s design and the materials used in its construction. All subsequent orbiters would use wings and a mid-fuselage significantly stronger than that installed on Enterprise, and some aluminum castings in other areas of the fuselage were changed to titanium as a weight savings measure. Also, the decision to use boron-epoxy as reinforcement on the thrust structure would require its replacement. Hence a refit of Enterprise would be costly and would take time. The wings would need to be returned to Grumman in New York, the mid-fuselage to Convair in San Diego, and the aft-fuselage to Downey – all expenses the program did not have funds to cover.  
  
Fortunately, there was an alternative: Structural Test Article STA-099, which was also under construction in Palmdale. Its design incorporated many of the changes and could be more readily rebuilt for operational service. Some estimates have indicated this may have saved the program as much as $100 million. The space program had not previously used a specific prototype both as a structural test article and as a flight vehicle, but careful study showed that this was feasible. The STA test sequence was modified to ensure the airframe was not damaged and STA-099 received a new designation, OV-099. The world would know it as “Challenger.”  
  
A joint NASA-Air Force position paper, dating to May 1973, had anticipated 581 shuttle flights from 1979 to 1990, and derived a requirement for five orbiters in the operational fleet. NASA Administrator Robert Frosch had met with President Jimmy Carter just before Christmas 1977 and tried anew for a fleet of five Space Shuttle orbiters, meaning Enterprise would still be refurbished and join the operational fleet – now being put fifth in line. NASA’s wish for a five-orbiter fleet was based on the assumption that the number of payloads would more than double during the 1980s (from approximately 40 payloads a year to over 90 a year. The acting OMB director, James McIntyre, had replied with a letter making it clear that Carter was no Santa Claus:  
  
 _“The decision was clearly to support a four-orbiter option… The President stated his explicit concern that no action be taken that might be interpreted as a possible commitment now by the Government to build a fifth orbiter… The President’s decision on Space Shuttle orbiters can be summarized as follows… A total fleet of four operational orbiters will meet civilian and military shuttle flight requirements and funds to proceed with production of a four-orbiter fleet are provided in the NASA budget for FY 1979.”_  
  
President Carter’s decision had left Enterprise with little to no prospect for spaceflight,at least in the near future. It also amounted to an acknowledgement that the shuttle would do less work than NASA had anticipated. At the same time, it was becoming clear that this program would cost more than planned.

————-

The Space Shuttle era blossomed in the spring of 1979. The arrival of the first two shuttle orbiters – OV-102 Columbia and OV-101 Enterprise – and the first rollout to the pad of a complete shuttle stack heralded a fresh new day at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Having left her California birthplace, Columbia arrived first on March 24, with Enterprise following close behind on April 10. The Kennedy team boasted of housing the only two shuttles “in captivity.”  
  
NASA’s SCA 905, piloted by Joe Algranti, Kenneth R. Haugen, and Fitzhugh Fulton (DRFC), touched down on KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility after a one hours and 52 minute 747 transfer originating in Alabama. “We made two touch and go landings at the Cape for pilot proficiency,” Algranti said. “It was the last time we’d be able to fly the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft in this configuration for awhile,” he said.

Columbia was destined to launch the first shuttle crew, optimistically planned for later that year. Enterprise would pave the way to orbit for her sister ship as the facility verification vehicle during fit checks in the Vehicle Assembly Building and at  the launch pad. NASA alumnus Tip Malone was site manager during the tests: “Having the facility verification vehicle out here really saved the program a lot of time in getting things ready for the first orbiter flow,” Malone told the _Spaceport News_ in 1979.

First, an External Tank was mated with two inert Solid Rocket Boosters assembled on a Mobile Launcher Platform, or MLP, in a VAB high bay. Enterprise completed the stack. This first complete stack, called the “pathfinder vehicle,” was used to check out the mechanical interfaces between the shuttle and the bay’s extendable platforms, which were modified following processing of the last Saturn rocket.

Next, a crawler lifted the MLP and its load off the supporting mounts in the bay – a first at Kennedy – and headed for Launch Pad 39A on May 1, 1979. Family members of Kennedy workers were invited onto the center to witness Enterprise roll out to the pad for fit and validation tests. That first cautious trip took eight hours.

When this big transporter, carrying the fully assembled Space Shuttle vehicle, rumbled and clanked along the crawler way, it presented a scene that everyone hoped would be reenacted hundreds of times in the future. Following its arrival at Pad 39A, this assemblage looked as if it soon might be counted down and launched. It could not fly, of course; it was merely the same elaborate replica that had served in vibration tests at Marshall. But this vehicle gave ground crews a dress rehearsal for the launch of Columbia, who just then was attracting her own attentions within the nearby Orbiter Processing Facility.

Once at the pad, Enterprise supported checks of the sound suppression system, as well as loading of the super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants. Orbiter mid-body umbilicals were attached to the vehicle. Cryogenic propellants were to flow from storage facilities through the Mobile Launcher Platform into the Tail Service Masts, though these liquefied gases did not go further, for Enterprise lacked the appropriate plumbing.

Verification tests of the Orbiter Access Arm and Rotating Service Structure were conducted. The payload ground-handling mechanism for transfer of an assembled payload from the Rotating Service Structure into the shuttle’s cargo bay also demonstrated its readiness. A 20,000-pound concrete weight, representing a spacecraft, arrived within a sealed canister. With the RSS well away from the shuttle, workers hoisted the canister into the PCR, removed its dummy payload, then rotated the RSS to lie against the back of Enterprise for payload installation within the cargo bay. All this was done under strict environmental control, to prevent contamination of the “spacecraft.”

From May 1 to July 23, 1979, Enterprise completed extensive mechanical fit checks of Kennedy’s checkout and launch operations before she was rolled back to the VAB. “By using Enterprise, we were able to work out a lot of things on a noninterference basis, making the entire effort worthwhile,” Malone said.

—————-

Space Shuttle Enterprise returned to Dryden Flight Research Center in California August 16, 1979, following a six-day trip from Kennedy Space Center, mated to her 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Three quartes of a million people swarmed into airport areas for the six stopovers – Atlanta, St. Louis, Tulsa, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Vandenberg AFB – to get a closer look at the prototype of the nation’s first reusable spacecraft.  
  
Donald “Deke” Slayton, NASA’s program manager for Space Shuttle flight test operations, flew the T-38 chase plane accompanying the Enterprise, and was chief spokesman for the shuttle program during press interviews. Slayton shared the debriefings with the 747 crews from both Dryden and JSC Chief Pilot Joe Algranti, and pilots A.J. Roy, Ken Haugen, and Dick Scobee, with engineers Skip Guidry and Vince Alvarez, were the JSC crews.  
  
At each of the 24-hour stopovers, the Enterprise was a two-day, front-page story in area newspapers, and the lead story on TV newscasts and radio reports. Principal reason for scheduling six stopovers was to allow employees of shuttle contractors to view the craft for the first time. Following the August 15 morale booster visit at Vandenberg AFB, California, which let workers building the West Coast shuttle launch complex have a look at an actual orbiter, Enterprise returned to Edwards AFB the next day.   
  
The orbiter was demated from the SCA on August 23, and moved overland to Palmdale on October 30, 1979. While at Palmdale, selected parts of Enterprise were removed and refurbished for use on later orbiters as a cost saving measure. For the most part these items were controls, displays, and avionics from the flight deck, but a few other parts were removed also.  
  
On September 6, 1981, wearing a new coat of paint, Enterprise returned from Palmdale overland to Edwards Air Force Base for storage. Then on July 4, 1982, the day that Space Shuttle Columbia returned from her fourth spaceflight, she was put on display in front of her hangar to give the public a look at the first Space Shuttle orbiter as well. U.S. President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in front of Enterprise with the STS-4 crew joining him. And then OV-099 Challenger flew over, on top of the SCA, en route to Kennedy Space Center in preparation for her maiden voyage.   
  
In 1983 Enterprise launched a new career, one of public display, for with the shuttle now making flights into space, interest in it was high indeed. A special trans-Atlantic voyage was in the making for Enterprise.

————

After touring Europe and Canada, Enterprise arrived back at Edwards AFB on June 13, 1983, where she was temporarily placed in storage. In March 1984 the SCA with Enterprise left Edwards for a flight to Brookley Field in Mobile, Alabama, where the orbiter was lifted off the SCA and placed on a large barge that would bring it over the Mississippi River to New Orleans for the 1984 World Fair. Enterprise stayed in New Orleans until November when she was flown to Vandenberg AFB for her second visit.

At Vandenberg Enterprise was again called to perform in her role as a pathfinder. Mated to a pair of inert Solid Rocket Boosters, and the External Tank scheduled for STS-3V, Enterprise performed in a series of tests known as FVV (Flight Vehicle Verification) at the Vandenberg Launch Site. These tests gave preliminary indications that all the facilities at Space Launch Complex Six and the Orbiter Maintenance and Checkout Facility would support the planned launch of Discovery during 1986. Subsequent analysis showed some design flaws in SLC-6 which would have cost $1 billion, and two years, to correct. The Vandenberg site reached completion in October 1985 – just in time for the Air Force to turn decisively away from the shuttle following the loss of Challenger in 1986. Still, Enterprise had done her part for national defense.

After completion of the Vandenberg tests, Enterprise was ferried to Dryden on May 24, 1985, for storage until September 20, 1985, when she was flown to KSC. For two months OV-101 sat alongside the Saturn V rocket in the parking lot of the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building. Tourists loved it and on October 22, 1985, spectators at KSC beheld the spectacular sight of Enterprise, from a front-row seat, being witness to her sister ship Challenger successfully roaring into space for the final time.

On November 18, 1985, Enterprise arrived at Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C., and NASA handed her officially over to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM). OV-101 was stored in a hangar at Dulles, awaiting the Smithsonian to construct a “large aircraft annex” at the airport.

———-

The Enterprise continued to find use. There was concern that the brakes of an operational orbiter might fail following touchdown; if that happened, an arresting barrier might prevent the vehicle from overrunning its runway. During the week of June 8, 1987, a landing barrier, similar to ones used by the military to catch damaged aircraft, was erected at Dulles and Enterprise was slowly winched into it to determine if an orbiter could successfully use one without being damaged. Later in 1987, OV-101 was used for tests of the various crew bailout concepts being investigated in response to the Challenger accident.  
  
A somewhat more impromptu test in 1990 involved an antenna for the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX). No operational orbiter was available as a test bed for the new antenna, while windows of shuttle mockups lacked the right type of glass. Enterprise filled the need. Experimenters mounted their antenna within one of her windows, which indeed was of the proper material. An antenna based on this design subsequently flew aboard the orbiter Discovery, early in 1995, and communicated with the Russian space station Mir.  
  
For Enterprise, however, such moments in the sun proved few and far between. From time to time NASA engineers have taken to cannibalizing Enterprise to use parts of the orbiter for a variety of tests. In 1990 they borrowed a main landing gear, in 1997 the nose landing gear to support structural tests and orbiter upgrades, and in 1999 samples of wires were taken out for tests when the other four operational orbiters had serious problems with their Kapton wires. The wires in Enterprise were the oldest available to NASA for tests.  
  
On February 5-9, 1996, a team from JSC inspected Enterprise to determine her structural condition since there were proposals that involved refurbishing the airframe for use as an additional flight vehicle. Although the team could not conduct a thorough inspection due to the way Enterprise was positioned in her temporary storage location at Dulles, a fairly complete visual inspection was accomplished. Overall, the team found the vehicle to be in “fairly good condition” considering its long-term exposure to the elements. However, the engineering studies of its suitability for refurbishment as an unpiloted orbiter brought no follow-up.  
  
For two weeks at the end of June 1997, JSC engineers conducted an evaluation of the structural integrity of the payload bay doors on Enterprise to determine if the composite construction had degraded due to environmental exposure over the years. JSC was interested in the conditions of the doors in case a replacement was needed in the future for an operational orbiter. The non-destructive evaluation was accomplished using state-of-the-art shearography inspection techniques. The inspection showed that the OV-101 doors were still in serviceable condition and could be used after refurbishment if required.

In April 2003, in the wake of the loss of the orbiter Columbia, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) requested that the main landing gear door of Enterprise would be needed for tile tests. The left main landing gear door of Enterprise was flown to KSC and in one of the Orbiter Processing Facilities workers placed the TPS tiles on it. After that was completed the door was transferred to the Southwest Research Institute for impact testing. The CAIB also used part of Enterprise’s left wing; the T-seals were used for foam impact tests in June and July 2003.

Shortly after that, in November 2003, the Enterprise was rolled out into the open for the first time in nearly two decades and was moved to the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the new Smithsonian NASM companion facility next to the Dulles Airport, the Steven Ferencz Udvar-Hazy Center, which opened its gates in December 2003. However, the 53,000-square foot space hangar was not accessible to the public until November 1, 2004, because Enterprise needed to undergo some cleaning work and other artifacts had to be moved in.

———-

On November 20, 2003, after spending exactly 18 years in a non-descript hangar at Dulles International Airport, just outside Washington D.C., Space Shuttle Enterprise was moved to her new home. Instead of sitting in dark, unglamorous storage, Enterprise was now in a bright place of honor. Her new home was the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center located to the east of Dulles.  
  
If you have seen the immense museum in downtown Washington D.C., stretch your imagination and picture a giant hangar-shaped structure easily capable of enclosing the entire downtown museum – with a lot of room to spare. Indeed, it is eerily reminiscent of the aft cargo bay of a Constitution-class starship. Enterprise would have some famous company: Enola Gay, an SR-71, the first Boeing 707, a Concorde SST, the Apollo Lunar Quarantine Facility, and hundreds of other notable aircraft and hardware.  
  
Enterprise flew only 5 missions on her own - all in 1977 - none of which ever left the Earth's atmosphere. While some consideration was given to modifying Enterprise to fly in space, these plans were discarded when it was determined that a substantial portion of the vehicle would have to be replaced so as to make it light enough to carry a meaningful payload into space. It would be cheaper to simply build a new, lighter shuttle.  
  
Unlike her Star Trek namesake, there wouldn’t be any refitting of Enterprise. But like her famous namesake, she would still go on to serve for many years to come. Although Enterprise was destined to stay on Earth, some of her components were refurbished and eventually flown on other shuttles. After serving as a public relations centerpiece at a variety of international venues in the early 1980s, Enterprise was retired - with thought given to her eventual exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution. Eventually she was delivered to a Smithsonian storage location at Dulles on November 18, 1985.  
  
——-

On Friday, April 27, 2012, the Shuttle Enterprise landed in New York City mounted atop a Boeing 747 jumbo jet at 11:22 a.m. EDT, after taking off from Washington D.C. earlier that morning. It was a historic day for science and space exploration: a day that marked the end, in spirit, of the STS program and the beginning of a new type of space exploration vehicle that may one day take us back to the moon and beyond. In attendance for this momentous occasion was none other than Star Trek‘s original Spock, Leonard Nimoy.  
  
What is so remarkable about the Enterprise is that it was the first space shuttle built by NASA that would determine the fate of all future space flights using the STS design. To our greater relief, astonishment, and most certainly pride, the Enterprise, named after Star Trek’s famed space exploration cruiser both literally and spiritually, did indeed surpass our expectations. With some design improvements and slight modifications, NASA continued to use the STS Space Shuttles for nearly four decades in scientific discovery and space exploration.  
  
Even more telling of Star Trek’s intimate connection to NASA’s ongoing mission was the fact that Leonard Nimoy, Spock himself, was present at Enterprise’s beginning and end. “This is a reunion for me,” Nimoy said in a speech on Friday discussing the Enterprise’s final landing. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” He recalled that his memory of the Enterprise’s departure from the ground on February 15, 1977, was still vivid today as it was when it first took off. Leonard Nimoy bid his final farewell to the legendary craft by offering his famous catchphrase: “Live long and prosper.”  
  
Even Gene Roddenberry himself was present at the Enterprise’s dedication ceremony in 1976. Though he sadly passed away before he could ever see the Enterprise in its final flight to mark the end of the now historic STS program, the famed space shuttle will always stand in memoriam to Rodenberry’s vision of the future and for all of Star Trek.  
  
Now, we look to the future, the undiscovered country: a place of unimaginable wonder, beauty, and mystery. To boldy go where no man has gone before. That has always been our motto, and we shall continue to live up to it as we head into space with the new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) design to send humans back into space, back to the moon and hopefully far beyond to finally reach the cold, inhospitable surface of Mars.


	9. STS-6:background

The STS-6 flight, the first space voyage of Challenger, is symbolized by the hexagonal shape of its crew emblem. The overall color theme of the patch is a patriotic red, white and blue. It has a border of royal blue, which surrounds an inner band of white. This inner band is bordered on the interior by a thin red line. This band lists, in royal blue to match the border, the surnames of Challenger’s four crew members – astronauts Paul J. Weitz, Karol J. Bobko, F. Story Musgrave, and Donald H. Peterson – along with the mission’s sequence numeral and the name of the spacecraft in the inner line’s red color.  
  
The center area of the patch is dominated by a spacescape, which depicts the orbiter flying in the foreground as it creates an orbital path from behind the Earth. The planet is depicted as a large, light-blue sphere, rimmed with a slightly darker blue. The orbiter is seen in a side – and slightly frontal – view with the payload bay doors open. The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, combined with the Inertial Upper Stage, is depicted during its deployment from the Challenger’s cargo bay. It trails a white streamer behind the far side of the globe, just as Challenger trails a red one. Both the orbiter and the TDRS are shown in shades of white, with light blue shading and black detail. The IUS has got a band of red on its exterior.  
  
Slightly above and behind Challenger are shining white stars which form the constellation Virgo. These six stars against a background of deep navy blue represent the mission sequence number – whereby the five stars to the right of the vertical tail symbolize Columbia’s five trips into space, the lone star to the left the first use of the newest member of the Space Shuttle fleet. Virgo itself is also symbolic of the maiden flight of Challenger.

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In actuality, the spacecraft Challenger was the “Early Bird” of America’s Space Transportation System’s Earth-orbiting fleet. Structural fabrication of Challenger had commenced on January 6, 1975, about a year earlier than the origin of Columbia. In several transitional periods Challenger went from structural assembly to becoming the Structural Test Article (STA-099), then back into manufacturing modification period for renovation and uprating to “flight worthy” status to final assembly.  
  
Rockwell’s original $2.6 billion contract had authorized the building of a pair of static test articles (MPTA-098 and STA-099) and two initial flight test vehicles (OV-101 and OV-102). The 1978 decision not to modify Enterprise from her ALT configuration would leave only one space-rated orbiter. This vehicle, Columbia, was rolled out of the Palmdale plant on March 8, 1979.   
  
While Enterprise and MPTA-098 were undergoing tests, Lockheed-California in Palmdale was busy trying to verify the structural integrity of STA-099. On February 4, 1978, Rockwell had delivered the nearly-complete airframe to the Lockheed-California Company located across the runway at Plant 42. Twelve months of testing would take place in a 43-ton steel rig built especially for the Space Shuttle test program.   
  
The test rig contained 256 hydraulic jacks, distributed over 836 load application points, which simulated various stress levels under control of a computer. These stress levels duplicated the launch, ascent, on-orbit, reentry and landing phases of flight. Three 1,000,000 pound-force hydraulic cylinders were used to simulate the thrust from the Space Shuttle Main Engines. Heating and cooling simulations were conducted along with the stress tests.  
  
In the meantime, on January 5, 1979, NASA awarded Rockwell a supplemental contract to modify STA-099 into a space-rated orbiter (OV-099), and followed this on January 29, 1979, with an order to construct two additional vehicles (OV-103 and OV-104). This $1.9 billion contract also covered modifying OV-102 following the orbital flight test series (STS-1 thru STS-4).

Testing was completed successfully and Challenger was returned to Rockwell on November 7, 1979, for conversion into OV-099. This conversion, while easier than it would have been to convert Enterprise, still involved a major disassembly of the vehicle. Within a month of arriving back from Lockheed, the payload bay doors, elevons and body flap had been removed so they could be returned to the original vendors for modifications. By January 18, 1980, the vertical stabilizer had been removed and shipped back to Fairchild-Republic in New York for rework.  
  
Challenger had been built with a simulated crew module (which had arrived at Palmdale on January 28, 1977), and the forward fuselage halves had to be separated to gain access to the crew module. This had occurred on February 1981, and the upper forward fuselage was subsequently sent to Downey for rework. The construction of a space-worthy crew module design had already started with long-lead fabrication on January 2, 1979. This had been followed by the start of crew module assembly on June 21, 1979, followed by installation of initial systems on November 3, 1980. On July 14, 1981, the crew module arrived at Palmdale for integration into the vehicle structure. The lower fuselage was modified in Palmdale. The entire aft fuselage was removed and sent to Downey for modifications, returning to Palmdale on July 21, 1981.  
  
On October 15, 1976, the mid-fuselage for STA-099 had arrived at Palmdale for integration with the rest of the vehicle’s components. Following the structural test program, preparations for the modifications to the mid-fuselage were begun on January 28, 1980. On May 26, 1977, the aft payload bay doors for STA-099 had arrived at Palmdale, followed by the forward doors on July 22. On December 7, 1979, after completion of the STA program, the doors were demated from Challenger for rework to orbital certification. By January 25, 1980, the doors had arrived at Rockwell, Tulsa, for rework operations, and were delivered for configuration on Challenger on July 10, 1981.  
  
The final assembly of the vertical tail had begun on October 1, 1976, the structure being delivered on dock at Palmdale on April 6, 1977. It had been mated to STA-099 on September 30, 1977, and, after the structural test program, was demated and delivered back to Fairchild, New York, on January 18, 1980, for rework. It was on dock at Palmdale again on March 26, 1981, for mating to Challenger.   
  
The body flap for Challenger had arrived on dock at Palmdale on May 31, 1977, and after the STA program was demated by December 14, 1979, for rework, returning to Downey on January 25, 1980. On September 1, 1980, modifications to the body flap were begun. The modifications were completed by July 17 and the unit was placed on dock at Palmdale on July 24, 1981, for final installation activities.  
  
The final assembly of the original STA-099 wings had begun at the prime contractor on October 1, 1976, and the units had arrived on dock at Palmdale on March 16, 1977. Following the completion of the STA program, the elevons were demated on December 21, 1979 and returned to the prime contractor for rework on February 1, 1980. Three days later the preparations for the wing modifications were started, this part of the program being completed by November 21 of the same year. By March 30, 1981, the rework on the elevons had been completed at Palmdale, and these units were installed on Challenger’s wings.  
  
Additionally the wings were modified to incorporate lessons learned from the static testing. Part of the new loads data base analysis also allowed Rockwell to relax the requirements for the wing design on OV-103 and OV-104 in order to achieve a slight weight reduction. Challenger would end up some 2,486 pounds lighter than Columbia, in spite of having additional operational equipment installed, including two heads-up displays in the cockpit.  
  
On November 7, 1977, the Forward Reaction Control System (FRCS) for STA-099 had arrived on dock at Palmdale, and was demated by February 8, 1980, following completion of the STA program. By March 21, 1980, the forward RCS had arrived at Downey for rework to flight standard. On February 2, 1981, installation of the system components started, the package finally arriving at Palmdale on January 31, 1982, for installation in Challenger.  
  
The first set of OMS pods for Challenger arrived early in 1982 at Palmdale for installation of the TPS. The right-hand pod was delivered on February 15, and the left-hand pod on March 3. Following this activity the pods were transported to KSC on September 3, 1982, for installation on Challenger for its first mission.   
  
By October 23, 1981, the airframe had been modified to flight standard, and on October 26 the initial series of powered subsystems tests was started. An unpowered subsystems test was begun on November 2, and by January 29, 1982, the initial subsystems tests series had been completed. On April 16 the Challenger’s subsystems were cleared for operational use, and on April 30, 1982, the final acceptance test was completed at the Palmdale plant. In June 1982 Challenger received her final certifications before delivery. On June 4 the post-checkout operations were successfully completed, as was the configuration inspection 17 days later.

On June 30, 1982, the vehicle was officially rolled out of the Palmdale facility, completing more than 7 1/2 years work, so bringing it up to operational standard as the second flight vehicle. On July 1, 1982, as her sister ship Columbia was orbiting the Earth during the fourth flight day of the fourth shuttle mission, Challenger was transported by road in a 38-mile journey from the Palmdale plant to Edwards Air Force Base for attachment to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for its journey to KSC.  
  
Challenger was the first orbiter delivered with a name on the upper right wing and the “USA” and American flag on the left. The new stylized NASA logo and the name Challenger appeared on the right wing. The name of the vehicle was also positioned beneath the cockpit windows on the side of the forward fuselage, which remained visible with payload bay doors open for on-orbit identification.  
  
Shortly after Columbia STS-4 landed at Edwards AFB, completing the fourth flight of the program and its OFT series, Challenger was sent on its way to KSC by President Reagan, the vehicle taking to the air for the first time on the USA’s 206th birthday, July 4, 1982. Literally millions first saw Challenger when, atop the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, the orbiter’s right wing was dipped during a nationally televised low-pass salute to President and Mrs. Reagan at Edwards Air Force Base.  
  
The SCA flew to Florida in two stages, taking the orbiter to Ellington Field, Texas, for an overnight stop and finally, on July 5, from Ellington Field to Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Following demate from the SCA Challenger was moved to the OPF to begin final preparations for its first flight on STS-6 early in 1983.

——————-

According to British space writer Ben Evans, on February 2, 1979, the Structural Test Article officially was renamed _Challenger_. “Like Columbia (and, indeed, the subsequent vehicles), Challenger was named for a seafaring vessel that had made a prolonged cruise from December 1872 until May 1876, gathering the equivalent of 50 volumes of information about the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Later, the name’s proud heritage continued when the Apollo 17 crew chose it for their lunar module in December 1972.”

 


	10. STS-6:the crew

An old crew would fly the new shuttle – 48 years being the astronauts’ average age. “It was true that the four men of STS-6, with a combined age of 191, were the oldest yet launched,” explained British space writer Ben Evans in his 2007 book _Space Shuttle Challenger_ , in which he speculated that the “aged cowboy image” aptly portrayed by Commander Weitz and company as oldest astronaut crew to date may have inspired the movie _Space Cowboys_. “Only Weitz had flown before – on a four-week mission to the Skylab space station in mid-1973 – and later assumed the mantle of deputy chief of NASA’s astronaut corps. For his crewmates, it was their first flight, but all had vast expertise on the ground.”  
  
In an interview for the JSC Oral History Project in November 2000, STS-6 Commander Paul Weitz explained that his crew had been assigned somewhere during the process of building up to the STS-1 launch. “I don't remember the time frame. STS-1 launched in '81, but it was originally scheduled around '78 or '79, so we were probably assigned a crew without being anointed as a crew. We were a group of people, myself and Bo and Story and Don, that were put together and were told basically to start working together as a group, for whatever reason.”   
  
“We were involved early on,” continued Weitz. “For example, Story Musgrave, who was MS1 on STS-6, was assigned the primary responsibility from the Astronaut Office to monitor the deployment and retraction mechanism for the payload bay doors. So it really was a mix of working as a crew and still having an office responsibility that was outside what you would normally be doing as an assigned crew. So we eased into that. Then you'd always try to go scam some simulator time if you could, or trainer, or whatever was available, to start working, on the off chance we were going to be assigned as a crew to a mission and get to fly it. But that was an evolutionary type of thing, and I couldn't tell you, when we were announced as a crew to fly STS-6, where that fit into the overall schedule,” explained Weitz. “It turned out to be the first six crews were first assigned as A through F, and we were crew F. Of course, we then assumed the title of _F-Troop_ , which became our theme.”  
  
“The nickname originated from a television series about an aging cavalry unit and partly honored their military backgrounds, as well as reflecting the fact that they were the sixth team of astronauts to fly the Space Shuttle,” said Ben Evans. “It was Weitz’ idea and they even had official F-Troop photographs and memorabilia produced.”  
  
Mission Specialist Donald Peterson told an Oral History Project interviewer in November 2002, “In fact, we have a picture, an F-Troop picture, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but we had on the little flight T-shirts and the flight pants. But we went out and bought cowboys hats. I had a sword that had once belonged to some lieutenant in Napoleon’s army. We got a Winchester rifle, the lever-action rifle, and a bugle and a cavalry flag, and we posed for this picture.”  
  
Peterson continued describing the picture. “Weitz, of course, is the Commander, and he’s sitting there very stern-looking, with the sword sticking in the floor. I had the rifle, and I think Story had the bugle. Anyway, we had that picture made, and we were passing them out, and NASA asked us not to do that. They thought that was not dignified. But I thought it was hilarious. I still have a bunch of them. But, anyway, we knew about, and we sort of laughed about and took advantage of the F-Troop thing, because there were a lot of little jokes about that that went around.”   
  
“In fact, behind their backs and with tongues firmly embedded inside cheeks, fellow astronauts dubbed Weitz’ team, somewhat less flatteringly, _The Geritol Bunch_ ,” said space writer Ben Evans. MS2 Don Peterson didn’t hear that term until after the flight was over. “Maybe that was something that everybody said about us when we weren’t around, you know, probably. We were on orbit, and somebody was talking about ‘ _how old you guys are_.’ We had taken a bunch of pictures, and I couldn’t resist, I said, ‘ _You know, we’re not going to show the pictures to anybody under thirty-five when we come back. So some of you guys, some of you wise asses, won’t see them_!’”

————-

 **CDR Paul Joseph “P.J.” Weitz** , Captain USN, ret., was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on July 25, 1932, where he attended McKinley Elementary School and in 1950 graduated from nearby Harborcreek High School. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1954 and a master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, in 1964.  
  
Weitz retired from the Navy in 1976 with 22 years of service. In 1954 he had received his commission as an ensign through the Naval ROTC program at Penn State. He served for one year at sea aboard a destroyer before going to flight training and was awarded his wings in September 1956. Weitz was an A-4 tactics instructor at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, from 1956 to 1960, a project officer at China Lake, California, in various air-to-ground delivery tactic projects from 1960 to 1962. After having received his master’s degree in 1964, Weitz also flew combat missions in Vietnam and served as detachment officer-in-charge at Whidbey Island. He logged more than 6,200 hours flying time – 5,100 hours in jet aircraft.  
  
Paul Weitz was one of the 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. Michael Cassutt described his first assignments, “Weitz specialized in the Apollo Command and Service Module system. He served as CapCom for Apollo 12 and had been informally selected as backup CMP for Apollo 17 (putting him in line for a flight to the Moon on Apollo 20) when Congressional budget cuts eliminated that mission. In 1970 he began to work on the Apollo Applications Program Saturn Workshop, later known as Skylab, and was officially selected as pilot of Skylab 2 in January 1972.”  
  
Skylab 2, the first manned Skylab mission, was launched on May 25, 1973 and ended on June 22, 1973. Joining Weitz for the initial on-orbit repair, activation and 28-day flight qualification operations of Skylab were spacecraft commander Charles Conrad and science pilot Joseph Kerwin. In logging 672 hours and 49 minutes aboard the workshop, the crew established a new world record for a single mission. Weitz also logged two hours and 11 minutes in extravehicular activities.  
  
Paul Weitz later admitted feeling really glad having been able to take command of NASA’s newest addition to the shuttle fleet in 1983. “As a crew we were glad to have the opportunity. It's a little distinction. Each crew, each mission looks for some distinction you like to hang your hat on. Flying the inaugural flight or the maiden flight with Challenger, we thought it was a good deal.”   
  
As to the rest of the STS-6 crew assignments, Paul Weitz later explained he didn’t have any input. “The four names were just, ‘ _There they are. This is the F crew._ ’ It was Weitz, Bobko, Musgrave, and Peterson. So, no. As opposed to in Apollo, I think – it’s my understanding that the commanders, once they flew, well, they had to fly before. Typically they flew before being assigned as commander, and they had strong input into crew makeup.” He explained, “For example, Pete Conrad's first flight was with Gordo Cooper. After that, Pete's crew was always all Navy. He obviously had a strong input into the crew makeup. Because I wasn't a mission commander; I was the head of this F crew, but if we did fly, then the people were going to fly in these positions. I was going to get to fly. I never did care that much and I had confidence in the other three guys.”

——————

 **PLT Karol Joseph “Bo” Bobko** , Colonel USAF, was born in New York City on December 23, 1937, and graduated Brooklyn Technical High School in 1955. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Air Force Academy in 1959 and a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970. Bobko received his wings in 1960 and from 1961 to 1965 flew F-100 and F-105 aircraft at Cannon AFB, New Mexico, and Seymore Johnson AFB, North Carolina. He then attended the Aerospace Research Pilots School at Edwards Air Force Base and in June 1966 was assigned as an astronaut in the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory program.

STS-6 was his first spaceflight, but Karol Bobko had already logged over 4,800 hours of flying time in the F-100, F-104, F-105, T-33 and T-38. In 1970, after he had transferred to NASA after the cancellation of the MOL program a year earlier, Bobko became a crewmember on the Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test (SMEAT) – a 56-day simulation of a Skylab mission, enabling crewmen to collect medical experiments baseline data and evaluate equipment, operations and procedures. He was joined by astronauts Robert Crippen and William Thornton. Bobko was also a member of the astronaut support crew for the joint U.S./Soviet ASTP mission in 1975.

Bobko then became support crewmember for the shuttle Approach and Landing Test program and was assigned to the Orbital Flight Test group involved with ground tests and checkout of the orbiter Columbia. He worked as CapCom and chase pilot. But being assigned for his first spaceflight changed his outlook a lot, as he explained in a 2002 interview for the JSC Oral History Project. “It just changes the way you look at things. It’s not something out there in the mist; it’s up close and personal. So I think, you know, there’s a lot to be learned for a spaceflight, and it doesn’t seem like there’s ever enough time. You feel you want to learn it all, and it gives you a lot of incentive to work hard and try to learn as much as you can and get things as squared away as you can.”

——————

 **MS1/EV1 Franklin Story Musgrave** , MD, was born August 19, 1935, in Boston, Massachusetts, but considered Lexington, Kentucky., to be his hometown. He graduated from St. Mark’s School, Southborough, Massachusetts, in 1953. Musgrave received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Statistics from Syracuse University in 1958, a Master of Business Administration degree in Operations Analysis and Computer Programming from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1959, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Marietta College in 1960, a doctorate in Medicine from Columbia University in 1964, and a Master of Science in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Kentucky in 1966.  
  
Also, following graduation from high school in 1953, Musgrave entered the Unites States Marine Corps and completed basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina. He completed training at the U.S. Naval Airman Preparatory School and the U.S. Naval Aviation Electrician and Instrument Technician School in Jacksonville, Florida. He served as an aviation electrician and instrument technician and as an aircraft crew chief while completing duty assignments in Korea, Japan, Hawaii, and aboard the carrier USS Wasp in the Far East.  
  
By April 1979 Musgrave had flown 90 different types of civilian and military aircraft, logging over 10,800 hours flying time, including 4,300 in jet aircraft, and he held instructor, instrument instructor, glider instructor, and airline transport ratings. An accomplished parachutist, he made more than 330 freefalls – including over 100 experimental freefall descents involved with the study of human aerodynamics. He held an International Jumpmaster Class C license and was President and Jumpmaster of the Bluegrass Sport Parachuting Association in Lexington, Kentucky, from 1964 to 1967.  
  
Story Musgrave was employed as a mathematician and operations analyst by the Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York, during 1958. He served a surgical internship at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington from 1964 to 1965. He continued there as a USAF postdoctoral fellow (1965 to 1966), working in aerospace medicine and physiology and as a National Heart Institute postdoctoral fellow (1966 to 1967), teaching and doing research in cardiovascular and exercise physiology. Musgrave had written 30 scientific papers in the areas of aerospace medicine and physiology, temperature regulation, exercise physiology and clinical surgery.    
  
Dr. Musgrave was selected as one of 11 scientist astronauts in August 1967, “at a time when NASA was planning an ambitious series of Apollo lunar landings and scientific missions in Earth orbit,” said Michael Cassutt. “Within months budget cuts forced on NASA because of the Vietnam War eliminated most of the scientist astronauts’ flight opportunities.”  
  
Musgrave completed astronaut academic training and a year of military flight training. He worked on the design and development of the Skylab program and became backup science pilot for Skylab 2. He served as CapCom for the Skylab 2 and 3 missions. From 1974 he was working on the development of the Space Shuttle; Musgrave was Mission Specialist on the first and second Spacelab Mission Simulations. He participated in the design and development of all shuttle EVA equipment, including spacesuits, life support systems, airlocks, and Manned Maneuvering Units. From 1979 to 1982 Musgrave was involved in testing computer software at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory.  
  
While preparing for future space missions, Musgrave continued clinical and scientific training as a part-time surgeon at the Denver General Hospital and was a part-time professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.  
  
Married to the former Patricia Marguerite Van Kirk of Patterson, New Jersey, Story Musgrave also was a father of five children: Lorelei,Bradley,Holly,Christopher,and Jeffrey. Among his recreational interests he listed bicycling, chess, flying, gardening, long-distance running, motorcycling, parachuting, photography, scuba diving, skateboarding, and soaring.  
  
“Scientist, doctor, engineer, pilot, mechanic, poet and literary critic, Musgrave approached STS-6 with the characteristically philosophical outlook for which he was to become famous,” Ben Evans wrote in his book and quoted the space-age Renaissance man, “ _I got into this business to be on the intellectual and physical frontier. I wanted a transcendental experience – an existential reaction to the environment_.”  
  
Musgrave continued, “I’m not talking about an illusion or seeing something that wasn’t there, but a magical emotional reaction to the environment. That is what I’ve been after all my life: to experience and feel new sensations.” Evans wrote, “Musgrave has freely admitted that, even on his first flight, he exuded an aura of self-confidence ‘ _in myself and the mission. I knew what was going to happen – and it happened! I knew every valve, every switch and every number on this flight. It was sheer play for me to be able to so completely interact with my environment_.’”

————

 **MS2/EV2 Donald Herod “Don” Peterson** , Colonel USAF, ret., was born in Winona, Mississippi, on October 22, 1933, where he graduated from Winona City High School. In 1955 he received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and later, in 1962, a master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

Astronaut biographer Michael Cassutt said, “Peterson elected to serve in the Air Force, and, after pilot training, served as an instructor with the Air Training Command until 1960.” After four years as a military training officer, Peterson continued three years as a nuclear systems analyst with the Air Force Systems Command. He was also a pilot with the Tactical Air Command and graduated from the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards AFB before being assigned to the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in June 1967.

Also belonging to this third selection group of MOL astronauts was Major USAF James Alan Abrahamson, who since 1981 had been in charge of the Space Shuttle program and was soon to become the head of President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program – the Strategic Defense Initiative. Other than Abrahamson, after the cancellation of MOL in 1969, Donald Peterson had joined the NASA astronaut corps. He served in the astronaut support crew for Apollo 16 before being assigned to the shuttle program.

“He logged over 5,300 hours of flying time, including 5,000 hours in jets,” described Cassutt. “Peterson retired from the Air Force with the rank of Colonel in January 1980, though he remained at NASA in a civilian capacity.

Being asked in the 2002 interview when he did learn of his selection for the STS-6 mission, Donald Peterson gave a surprising answer. “I don’t remember. Our flight got delayed. We trained for about, as I remember, thirteen months, and we were all ready to go, and then they had a hydrogen leak, and they couldn’t find it. We then got, like, a two- or two-and-a-half-month delay, and so we just kept on training. So we were in training for a long, long time.”

Peterson continued, ”So I had to have been told sixteen, seventeen, eighteen months before the time we actually flew, because we trained sixteen or seventeen months, all told. Of course, you had to know you were on the crew before you’d start training. But I don’t remember exactly how I found out. I don’t know whether Abbey called or Paul Weitz called. Somebody called on the phone and said, “I’ll offer you a flight on STS-6 if you want to do that,” and it was always that kind of thing. But as I remember, it wasn’t a huge big deal. I mean, I just figured sooner or later I’d get a chance to fly, and when it came along, obviously I accepted.”


	11. STS-6:mission

STS-6 will be launched from Complex 39's Pad A at Kennedy Space Center. The launch window in April extends from 1:30 p.m. EST, to about 1:50 p.m. EST. The window's brevity is driven by sunset at Dakar, Senegal, for a trans-Atlantic abort. The window assumes a nominal landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California. STS-6 will be launched into a 298-km (185-mi.) circular orbit with an inclination to the equator of 28.5 degrees. The total payload weight up will be approximately 20,798 kg (45,853 lb.); payload weight down is estimated at 3,719 kg (8,200 lb.) The mission is designed to last 120 hours (5 days), 19 minutes, with landing scheduled for approximately 10:49 a.m. PST at Edwards.  
  
The five-day first flight of Challenger is requiring only three sets of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks in the cargo bay which forms the storage portion of the Power Reactant Storage and Distribution System (PDRS) and the liquids used to activate the spacecraft’s fuel cells and provide necessary oxygen for the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS). The Remote Manipulator System, the 50-foot-long arm for handling payloads which can be attached and operated from the left side of the open cargo bay, is not on this flight of Challenger. It will be used in later flights. Challenger also will use a Ku-band antenna for later flights.  
  
Challenger's primary cargo for STS-6 is the first of two Tracking and Data Relay Satellites which, by STS-9 in September 1983, will provide continuous voice and data from shuttle orbiters except for one narrow patch of "loss of signal" over Asia. The TDRS spacecraft are propelled to their geosynchronous parking orbits by Inertial Upper Stage solid-rocket two-stage boosters after deployment from Challenger's payload bay.  
  
Mission specialists Don Peterson and Dr. Story Musgrave will don Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU) on the fourth day of the flight to check out the new-generation shuttle spacesuits and to gain experience in simulated spacewalk tasks in the payload bay. A similar spacewalk was dropped from STS-5 when the suit pressure regulators and a fan malfunctioned.  
  
STS-6 experiments include a reflight of the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES), flown earlier on STS-4. The system is in a module attached to the left middeck wall where food galleys later will be fitted in orbiters. Other STS-6 experiments are the Monodisperse Latex Reactor (MLR) and Nighttime/Daytime optical Survey of Lightning (NOSL). Three getaway specials (GAS) canisters in the payload bay contain experiments flown by the U.S. Air Force Academy, Park Seed Co., and Asahi Shimbun of Japan. In addition to payloads and experiments, two life sciences detailed test objectives are listed for STS-6: Validation of Predictive Test and Countermeasures for Space Motion Sickness, and Cardiovascular Deconditioning Countermeasures.

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TDRS-A is the first of three identical spacecraft which are planned for the TDRS system. The TDRS system was developed following studies in the early 1970s which showed that a system of telecommunication satellites operated from a single ground station could better support the Space Shuttle and planned scientific and application mission requirements and, at the same time also halt the spiraling cost escalation of upgrading and operating a worldwide tracking and communications network of ground stations.  
  
In addition to the Space Shuttle, the TDRSS will be equipped to support up to 26 user satellites simultaneously and will provide two basic types of service: a multiple access service which can relay data from as many as 20 low-data-rate-user satellites simultaneously, and a single access service which will provide two high data rate communication relays.  
  
The TDRS spacecraft will be deployed from the orbiter Challenger approximately 11 hours after launch. Transfer to geosynchronous orbit will be provided by the solid propellant Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). Separation from the upper stage occurs approximately 17 hours after launch. Required earth pointing for TDRS commands and telemetry, plus thermal control maneuvers, will be done by the upper stage between first and second stage burns.  
  
Deployment of the solar panels, C-band antenna and space-ground-link antenna occur prior to TDRS separation from the upper stage. The single access parabolic antennas deploy after separation and subsequent to acquisition of the Sun and Earth by spacecraft sensors utilized for attitude control. Attitude and velocity adjustments place the TDRS into its final geostationary position. The TDRS is three-axis stabilized with the body fixed antennas pointing constantly at the Earth while the solar arrays track the Sun.

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MET 01:45:00 Payload bay doors open  
MET 08:25:00 TDRS tilt table elevated to 29 degrees  
MET 09:16:00 Final TDRS pre-deployment radio frequency check  
MET 09:21:00 Final "go/no go" to crew for deployment  
MET 09:38:00 IUS switched to internal power  
MET 09:48:00 TDRS tilt table elevated to 59 degrees  
MET 10:01:22 IUS/TDRS deployed from payload bay. (Orbit #8, 153 nm altitude)  
MET 10:19:00 Orbiter performs OMS separation maneuver  
MET 10:56:00 IUS first stage ignited for 2-minute, 31-second burn injecting TDRS into transfer orbit. Transfer orbit phase (5 hours, 18 minutes), with IUS in thermal control mode. Five TDRS omni-directional antenna "dip-out" tests performed over tracking stations, two of which will involve the relay of commands from White Sands Ground Terminal  
MET 16:14:00 IUS first stage jettisoned  
MET 16:16:00 IUS second stage ignited for one-minute, 43-second burn, placing TDRS into geosynchronous orbit at 56 degrees west longitude  
MET 16:33:00 Deployment of solar panels begins  
MET 16:37:00 Space/ground link antenna deployed  
MET 16:45:00 C-band antenna deployed  
MET 16:51:00 Solar panels in operating configuration  
MET 16:55:00 IUS separation from TDRS  
MET 17:08:00 Single access antenna (Ku- and S-band) deployment begins  
MET 19:35:00 Single access antennas fully deployed

MET 21:47:00 TDRS in operating configuration  
 

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The TDRS satellites are the largest privately owned telecommunications spacecraft ever built, each weighing about 2,268 kg (5,000 lb.). Each satellite spans more than 17.4 m (57 ft.) measuring across the solar panels. The single-access antennas, fabricated of woven molybdenum mesh and plated with 14K gold, each measure 4.9 m (16 ft.) in diameter, and when deployed, span more than 12.8 m (42 ft.) from tip to tip.  
  
The TDRS satellites are composed of three distinct modules: an equipment module, a communications payload module, and an antenna module. The modular structure reduces the cost of individual design and construction efforts that, in turn, lowers the cost of each satellite.  
  
The equipment module housing the subsystems that operate the satellite and the communications service is located in the lower hexagon of the spacecraft. The attitude control subsystem stabilizes the satellite so that the antennas have the proper orientation toward the Earth and the solar panels toward the Sun. The electrical power subsystem consists of two solar panels that provide a 10-year life span of approximately 1,700 watts power. The thermal control subsystem consists of surface coatings and controlled electric heaters.  
  
The communications payload module is composed of the electronic equipment and associated antennas required for linking the user spacecraft with the ground terminal. The receivers and transmitters are mounted in compartments on the back of the single-access antennas to reduce complexity and possible circuit losses.  
  
The antenna module is composed of four antennas. For single-access services, each TDRS satellite has two dual-feed S-band/Ku-band deployable parabolic antennas. These antennas are 4.9 m (16 ft.) attached on two axes that can move horizontally or vertically to focus the beam on orbiting spacecraft below. Those antennas are used primarily to relay communications to and from user spacecraft. The high bit-rate service made possible by these antennas is available to users on a time-shared basis.  
  
Each antenna simultaneously supports two user spacecraft services (one at S-band and one at Ku-band). For multiple-access service, the multi-element S-band phased array of helical radiators is mounted on the satellite body. The multiple-access forward link (between TDRS and the user spacecraft) transmits command data to the user spacecraft. In the return link, the signal outputs from the array elements are sent separately to the White Sands Ground Terminal parallel processors.  
  
A fourth antenna, a 2-m (6.5-ft.) parabolic reflector, provides the prime link for relaying transmissions to and from the ground terminal at Ku-band. The satellites are the first designed to handle telecommunications services through three frequency bands: S, Ku, and C.  
  
The TDRSS network will have all three satellites in geosynchronous orbit, over the equator. TDRS East will be located at 41 degrees west longitude over the Atlantic Ocean; TDRS West will be 171 degrees west longitude, about mid-Pacific Ocean. The position of the TDRS in-orbit spare tentatively has been assigned a location of 79 degrees west longitude, which is over the Pacific just off the coast of South America. The second TDRS satellite is scheduled for launch in June 1983, on STS-8, with TDRS-C scheduled for March 1984 on STS-12.  
  
Under contract, NASA has leased the TDRSS from the Space Communications Co. (SPACECOM) of Gaithersburg, Maryland, the owner, operator and prime contractor for the system. SPACECOM was established as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Western Union Corp. in 1976. In late 1979, Western Union reached an agreement with Fairchild Industries, Inc. and Continental Telephone Corp. for each to acquire a 25 percent interest in SPACECOM. The company is under contract to NASA to provide 10 years of continuous telecommunication services beginning in 1983. TRW Space and Technology Group in Redondo Beach, California, and the Harris Government Communications System Division in Melbourne, Florida, are the two prime subcontractors under SPACECOM for spacecraft and ground terminal equipment, respectively.

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The first scheduled user of the TDRSS network is the Landsat 4 Earth resources satellite, which was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., July 16, 1982. Landsat 4 is an experimental spacecraft with powerful remote-sensing capabilities from both a multi-spectral scanner and a thematic mapper. Other major users of the TDRSS include Spacelab and the Space Telescope.  
  
Other future users of the TDRSS network will include the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which will explore the diffuse cosmic background radiation of the universe; Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), which will make a high-sensitivity survey of the galactic plane to study galactic structure, gamma-ray emission and spatial variations; Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), which will obtain an accurate measurement of the Earth's monthly radiation budget for the upper atmosphere and for regional, zonal, and global spatial scales; and the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which will study the chemistry and physical processes acting upon and within the stratoThe ground station network now in operation by NASA is able to provide communications support for only a small fraction (typically 15 percent) of the orbital period. The TDRSS network, when established, should provide coverage for almost the entire orbital period of a user spacecraft. The TDRSS does no processing of user traffic, in either direction. Thus, the TDRSS operates as a "bent-pipe" repeater; in other words, it relays signals and data between the user spacecraft and ground terminal.  
  
A TDRSS ground terminal has been built at White Sands, N.M., which provides a location at a longitude with a clear line-of-sight to the TDRSS satellites and a place where rain conditions do not interfere with the availability of the K-band uplink and downlink channels. Also-located at White Sands is the NASA Ground Terminal (NGT), which provides the interface between the TDRSS and the other TDRSS network elements which have their primary tracking and communication facilities at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  
  
Also located at Goddard are the Network Control Center (NCC), which provides system scheduling and is the focal point for NASA communications with the TDRSS and the other TDRSS network elements; the operating Support Computing Facility (OSCF), which provides the network with orbital predictions and definitive orbit calculations for user spacecraft and the TDRSS; and the NASA Communications Network (NASCOM), which provides the common carrier interface at network locations and consists of domestic satellites and their interface through Earth terminals at Goddard, White Sands, and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.  
  
The Network Control Center at Goddard contains data processing equipment and software. Console operators monitor the data, schedule emergency interfaces, isolate faults in the system, account for the system, test the system, and simulate user spacecraft. The user services available from the TDRSS network are sent through the NASA Communications Network (NASCOM), a global system that provides long-line operational communications support to all NASA projects. It offers voice, data, and teletype links with the TDRSS network, the Ground Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network (GSTDN) and the user spacecraft control centers. NASCOM's circuits are provided and operated by commercial carriers under contract to NASCOM, which sends the TDRSS user data to the Operations Support Computer Facility (OSCF) and to the Sensor Data Processing Facility (SDPF), also at Goddard.  
  
The Sensor Data Processing Facility receives the telemetry and image data directly from the users through TDRSS or a ground station via the NASCOM or from magnetic tapes recorded and mailed from a ground station. At the Sensor Data Processing Facility the data are processed and distributed, including editing, time tagging, decommutating, formatting, and applying ancillary data. In addition, selected data are monitored for fault isolation.  
  
All of the telemetry data are routed directly to a user's Payload Operations Control Center (POCC). Each payload center is tailored to a specific space mission, providing support to one spacecraft or to a series of spacecraft in a project. Scientists, engineering and other technical experts in the center process experiment status, command and telemetry; handle attitude data for proper orientation of cameras and measuring instruments in the payload; control the payload operations and instrument sensors; and plan and analyze the mission.  
  
The Payload operations Control Center interfaces directly with the scientific investigators to plan payload experiment operations and to determine support requirements. Thus, a coordinated ground effort exists between the TDRSS network's NASA Ground Terminal, Network Control Center, the NASA Communications Network, and each Payload Operations Control Center to unite users with their spacecraft for command, telemetry, and data.sphere, mesosphere and the lower thermosphere.

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The Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) will be used to place NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite TDRS-A into geosynchronous earth orbit. The STS-6 crew will begin deployment activities approximately nine hours after Challenger reaches a low earth  
orbit of 283 km (153 nm). Upper stage airborne support equipment, located in the orbiter payload bay, will be used to position the IUS/TDRS-A combined vehicle into the proper deployment attitude -- an angle of 59 degrees -- and "kick" it into low Earth orbit. Deployment will be by a spring eject system.  
  
Following deployment from Challenger's payload bay, the orbiter will move away from the IUS/TDRS-A to a safe distance. The first stage will fire about 55 minutes after deployment from the payload bay. Following the aft (first) stage burn of two minutes 33 seconds, the solid fuel motor shuts down and the two stages separate. After coasting for several hours the forward (second) stage motor ignites at six hours 12 minutes after deployment for the final push to higher orbit. Following a 1-minute, 44-second burn, the forward stage will shut down as the IUS/TDRS-A reaches the predetermined geosynchronous orbit position.  
  
Six hours 54 minutes after deployment from Challenger the forward stage will separate from the TDRS-A and perform an anti-collision maneuver with its on board reaction control system. After the IUS upper stage reaches a safe distance from the TDRS, the stage will relay performance data back to a NASA tracking station and then shut itself down seven hours five minutes after deployment from the payload bay.  
  
A number of advanced features distinguish the IUS from other previous upper stages. It has the first completely redundant avionics system ever developed for an unmanned space vehicle. The system has the capability to correct in-flight features within milliseconds. Other advanced features include a carbon composite nozzle throat that makes possible the high-temperature, long-duration firing of the IUS motors; and a redundant computer system in which the second computer is capable of taking over functions from the primary computer if necessary.  
  
Originally intended as a temporary substitute for a reusable space tug when it was designed in the 1970s, the IUS booster was dubbed the “Interim” Upper Stage and later became “Inertial” in recognition of its inertial guidance system. Losing its “interim” status also reflected a growing awareness, when the space tug was cancelled in late 1977, that the IUS’ services would be needed throughout the 1980s.  
  
Physically, IUS is 5.18 m (17 ft.) long, 2.7 m (9 ft.) in diameter, and weighs more than 14,515 kg (32,000 lb.). The NASA version of the IUS contains 12,247 kg (27,000 lb.) of solid fuel propellant. The IUS consists of an aft skirt; an aft (first) stage that contains 9,707 kg (21,400 lb.) of solid propellant fuel and generates 20,685 kg (45,600 lb.) of thrust; an interstage; a forward (second) stage that contains 2,720 kg (6,000 lb.) of propellant and generates 8,390 kg (18,500 lb.) of thrust; and an equipment support section. The equipment support section contains the avionics which provide guidance, navigation, telemetry, command and data management, reaction control and electrical power.  
  
Solid propellant rocket motors were selected in the design of the IUS because of their compactness, simplicity, inherent safety, demonstrated reliability and lower cost.  Hydrazine-fed reaction control thrusters provide the IUS with additional stability during the coasting phase between first and second stage firings, as well as ensuring accurate roll control and assisting with the satellite payload’s insertion into geosynchronous orbit.  
  
During the IUS’ development, obstacles have been encountered with its propulsion system, including burst cases, tacky liners, soft and cracked propellants and nozzle delaminations, together with problems with its onboard software and avionics. The first operational use of the booster was supposed to be on the shuttle with TDRS-A, although delays and scheduling conflicts caused it to be leapfrogged by a pair of military communications satellites on an Air Force Titan 34D launched October 30, 1982. In spite of telemetry dropouts, that IUS mission proved successful.  
  
The IUS was built by the Boeing Aerospace Corp., of Seattle, Washington, under contract to the U.S. Air Force Systems Command. Development of the two-stage vehicle began in August 1976; in the early days of the IUS’ development, Boeing even proposed adding a smaller third stage to propel planetary missions out of Earth orbit, although the design would have been too large – with its payload attached – to fit comfortably aboard the shuttle. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, was NASA's lead center for IUS development and program management.

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On STS-2, Joe Engle was to don the new two-piece shuttle-era spacesuit – also known as Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) – seal himself into the middeck airlock, and conduct a depressurization test. However, one of the fuel cells flooded and had to be switched off, so the test was cancelled and the flight curtailed. The depressurization test was reassigned to STS-4. As it happened, the cover of the classified CIRRIS sensor system in Columbia’s bay had refused too open, and Ken Mattingly, who was to test the suit, proposed that he go out and open it manually, but permission was denied. The rules stated that astronauts only make spacewalks in pairs, so they would be able to help one another out. Spacewalking was not planned for the test flight phase; EVA was just a contingency in cas the payload bay doors failed to close.  
  
As soon as the Space Shuttle was declared operational, two of STS-5’s four-man crew were assigned the first excursion into the bay. This was postponed because Bill Lenoir suffered a dose of space sickness. The next day, however, he and Joe Allen spent four hours pre-breathing pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from their blood streams (such a long time was necessary because the orbiter had yet to be tested with partial-pressure air mix). Problems arose even before they entered the airlock. In the process of testing the suit components, Allen found that a fan in his life-support backpack was running hot. Even though the excursion had to be cancelled, Lenoir went ahead and donned his suit to test it, but unfortunately, its regulator would not maintain the necessary 4.3-psi pure oxygen pressure, so even the depressurization test had to be cancelled. It was not a very promising start.

The Extravehicular Activity planned for STS-6 is virtually a replay of that which had been planned for STS-5 and scrubbed because of equipment problems. Mission specialists Donald Peterson and Dr. Story Musgrave will enter the airlock and don Extravehicular Mobility Units before pre-breathing 100 percent oxygen for three hours. The orbiter cabin will remain pressurized at 14.7 psi during the extravehicular activity, planned for the fourth day of the flight.  
  
After depressurizing the airlock to space vacuum, Peterson and Musgrave will attach safety tethers prior to moving aft along the hinge line slide wires to the aft bulkhead, one observing the other as each translates aft. Spacesuit status checks are scheduled throughout the extravehicular activity. En route to the aft bulkhead, both crewmen will inspect the now empty IUS cradle and evaluate payload bay lighting, suit radio communications and other aspects affecting future extravehicular activities.  
  
Translating forward to a work station and toolbox, both will next evaluate unstowage and handling of tools adapted or built for extravehicular activity use. While at the work station, spacesuit joint mobility and reach, and suit-to-body zero-g pressure points will be evaluated.  
  
Both crewmen next move again to the aft bulkhead where they rig the aft winch cable through rollers and a snatch block to the IUS cradle to simulate contingency restowing of a stuck IUS cradle. Against the forward bulkhead, the crewmen operate the forward winch against an "Exergenie" acting as a dummy load on the winch line. A bag of tools will be transformed into a sort of space barbell in an evaluation of moving an object of large mass as one crewman tows the tool bag to the aft bulkhead and back again.  
  
Tools and equipment restowed, both men enter the airlock, close the hatch and repressurize to cabin pressure, ending the extravehicular activity at three and a half to four hours.

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The Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System, the first commercial experiment flown aboard the Space Shuttle, makes a return visit to space on STS-6. In addition to experimentation by the company, this flight marks the first use of the device by NASA scientists to expand the knowledge base of electrophoretic separation processes and further characterize the effects of gravity on continuous flow electrophoresis.  
  
NASA's use of the system for its own research is part of the consideration provided to the space agency under the terms of the NASA/McDonnell Douglas Joint Endeavor Agreement. This agreement provides a vehicle for private enterprise and NASA to work together to promote the utilization of space where a technological advancement is needed and there is a potential commercial application.  
  
During this flight McDonnell Douglas will seek to verify that the device separates materials to purity levels four times higher than those possible on earth. McDonnell Douglas separated samples of rat and egg albumin and cell culture fluid in the device during the STS-4 flight. Similar model protein samples will be separated on this flight.  
  
NASA's first sample, which will be the initial sample to be run in the device during the mission, is a high concentration of hemoglobin and will be used to evaluate the flow profile during the continuous flow electrophoresis unit operating in weightlessness. The second NASA sample, a mixture of hemoglobin and a polysaccharide, is intended to evaluate resolution of the separation and investigate separation of different molecular configurations.  
  
The agreement provides that general equipment performance data and the results from NASA's experiments using the device will be made public.  
  
The electrophoresis system, developed by the McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co., St. Louis, Mo., and initially carried into space on STS-4, has the potential for separating biological materials for both research and the production of pharmaceuticals. The device is designed to separate biological materials according to their surface electrical charge as they pass through an electric field. Unlike previous electrophoresis experiments conducted in space on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and on STS-2, this device processes large quantities of materials carried in a continuous stream.  
  
During the next two years, McDonnell Douglas' 249-kg (550 lb.), 1.8-m (6-ft.) high device is scheduled to be flown four more times in the orbiter middeck to identify materials that might be candidates for commercial development. Provided these experimental operations prove successful, the next step would be for a 2,268-kg (5,000-lb.) prototype production unit to be carried in the cargo bay on future shuttle flights. This fully automated system will have 24 separation chambers, compared with the one chamber in the present unit. The NASA experiments are supervised by Dr. Robert Snyder, Chief Separation Processes Branch, Marshall Space Flight Center.

The Mono-disperse Latex Reactor (MLR), is a materials processing in space experiment carried and operated in the middeck area of the orbiter cabin. The purpose of this experiment is to study the kinetics involved with the production of uniformly sized (monodisperse) latex beads (tiny spheres) in a low-gravity environment where the effects of buoyancy and sedimentation are minimized.  
  
The experiment consists of four, 0.3-m (1-ft.) tall reactors, each containing a chemical latex-forming recipe, housed in a 0.6-m (2-ft.) tall metal cylinder. The recipe consists of a suspension of very small latex beads in water plus other chemical ingredients which cause the beads to polymerize when the experiment is activated on orbit.  
  
The reactor was carried into space on two previous Shuttle missions. The experiment worked on its maiden voyage in space on STS-3 and produced quantities of 5-micron latex particles. During the STS-4 flight, the chemical processing was not completed because of a hardware malfunction. Engineers have since identified the malfunction and have made necessary modifications. On STS-6, the experiment will study the effects of varying processing parameters to better understand limitations in producing uniformly larger diameter spheres on earth. Latex spheres up to 10 microns in diameter are expected to be obtained.  
  
Monodispersed particles may have medical and industrial research applications. Some of the proposed applications of the latex beads include measuring the size of pores in the wall of the intestine in cancer research; measuring the size of pores in the human eye in glaucoma research; and as a carrier of drugs and radioactive isotopes for treatment of cancerous tumors. The National Bureau of Standards has also indicated its interest in routine use of the beads as calibration standards in medical and scientific equipment.  
  
Prior to launch, each of the reactors is loaded with 100 cubic centimeters of the chemical latex forming recipe. A small onboard computer will control the experiment after the Shuttle crew turns it on. In orbit, the latex mixture is heated to a constant 70-degree centigrade which initiates a chemical reaction to form the larger plastic beads. A recorder will store all data produced during operation of the experiment. The experiment requires about 20 hours of processing time. The reactor will be removed from the Challenger at the landing site and returned to the experimenters for sample and data analysis.  
  
The principal investigator on the experiment is Dr. John W. Vanderhoff of Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. The three co-investigators are Drs. Fortunato J. Micale and Mohamed S. El Aasser, also of Lehigh, and Dale M. Kornfeld of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

An experiment which studies lightning and thunderstorms from orbit is being flown again on STS-6. The experiment, entitled the Nighttime/Daylight Optical Survey of Thunderstorm Lightning, has been conducted on two previous shuttle flights, STS-2 and STS-4. The techniques developed to identify lightning discharges in this experiment help in the development of sensors to identify severe weather situations from future meteorological satellites.  
  
The lightning survey will be conducted by the Shuttle astronauts from the orbiter crew compartment using a motion picture camera to study lightning flashes visible above thunderstorms. When a target is in view, a crew member will use the camera to photograph through the windows of the crew cabin and will narrate his observations onto one channel of a tape recorder.  
  
The experiment hardware consists of a 16-mm data acquisition camera, a two-channel cassette tape recorder, and a photo-optical detector mounted on the camera Lightning discharges are detected by the photo-optical system (photocell), which creates an electronic pulse in response to the detection of a lightning flash. These pulses will be recorded on the other recorder channel. A lightning event, which is visible as only one flash, is usually composed of many separate discharges, or strokes, which are distinguished by the photocell.  
  
Thus, the photocell will also be used to study individual lightning strokes. In order to synchronize the photo-optical system pulses with the film in the camera, signals corresponding to camera shutter pulses will be recorded on the same track of the tape recorder as the astronaut narration. The motion picture camera also will be used during the day to film cloud structure and the convective circulations of storms.  
  
Candidate storms for this experiment will be targeted for the astronauts by a team of scientists at Marshall's Space Science Laboratory using a sophisticated developmental weather system called the Man-Computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS). When a potential storm is identified along the projected track path of the orbiter, the coordinates are given to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center so that the astronauts will be alerted. The data access system is a NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sponsored system based at the University of Wisconsin.  
  
According to scientists who are analyzing the experiment results to date, the most impressive data gathered during the fourth Shuttle flight last June shows lightning bolts which formed a huge "Y” shape illuminating an area as large as 400 square kilometers. The photographs of the thunderstorms from orbit, taken over South America during a night pass, revealed lightning bolts as long as 40 km (25 mi.), and simultaneous occurrences of lightning 100 km (62 mi.) away.  
  
Principal investigator is Dr. Bernard Vonnegut, of the State University of New York, Albany; co-investigators are Lee Vaughan Jr., of Marshall's Space Sciences Laboratory and Dr. Marcus Brook, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro.

With the Space Shuttle being heralded as “the people’s spacecraft,” it was inevitable that a wider cross-section of the world community should be given access to its facilities. Officially titled Small Self-Contained Payloads, the Getaway Special program is offered by NASA to provide anyone who wishes the opportunity to fly a small experiment aboard the Space Shuttle. This is the first time that such facilities have been made available to the general public.  
  
Since the offer was first announced in fall of 1976, literally hundreds of Getaway Special reservations have been made by individuals and organizations throughout the world. The Getaway Specials, which are flown on Shuttle missions on a space-available basis, are available to industry, educational organizations, and domestic and foreign governments, as well as individual citizens for legitimate scientific purposes.  
  
There are no stringent requirements to qualify for a Getaway Special, but the payload does have to meet safety criteria. It also must have a scientific of technological objective, and be in good taste. Not “crassly commercial,” to quote NASA’s application form. For example, a manufacturer may want to test, on a proprietary basis, a certain type of metal-making process in space for later use in his own production. NASA states that this would be not only permissible, but welcome.  
  
However, under the “crassly commercial” prohibition, a person who wished to fly thousands of plastic discs for later resale as “objects that have flown in space” would be refused. As another example of a prohibited proposal, NASA says that a person who would want to have the ashes of a departed loved one placed in orbit via “Getaway Special” package would be denied space because it would be considered to be in poor taste.  
  
“Getaway Special” spaces come in three standard sizes; five cubic feet, with a maximum weight of 200 pounds ($10,000), two and a half cubic feet and up to 100 pounds ($5,000), and one and a half cubic feet and up to 60 pounds ($3,000). NASA will provide advice on payload design, construction and testing and shuttle crew members will turn on and off up to three payload switches, although generally there will be not be any crew monitoring of Getaway Specials, or any form of in-flight servicing.

Three Getaway Special payloads will fly on STS-6. They are:  
  
**Artificial Snow Crystal Experiment** \- a $10,000, five cubic-foot experiment, sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo.  
  
The Asahi Shimbun, one of the largest newspapers in Japan with circulation of eight million, selected the snow crystal experiment from 17,000 ideas solicited from its readers. The idea to make artificial snowflakes in the weightlessness of space was proposed by two Japanese high school students, Haruhiko Oda and Toshio Ogaway  
(both boys).  
  
The reason the Asahi Shimbun chose the snow experiment stems from the fact that the first artificial snow crystal in the world was made and investigated by a Japanese physicist, the late Ikichiro Nakaya, in 1936. The payload was designed and manufactured by Nippon Electric Co. (NEC), the leadings satellite maker in Japan. NEC has made 15 of 23 Japanese satellites.  
  
The heart of the payload is two identical small copper boxes 4 cm x 4 cm x 10 cm (1.5 in. x 1.5 in. x 3.9 in.). Two semiconductor cooling modules are attached to each box to cool down the inside of the boxes to 15 Centigrade (59 Fahrenheit). On the end of the box, there is a small water container made of porous sintered metal in which 20 grams (0.7 of an ounce) of water is stored In the near zero weightlessness of orbit, the water in the container will be heated by a simple electrical heater up to 2030 C (68-86 F) to generate water vapor which will be supplied continuously into the cooled box. Then, a very small platinum heater on which a few milligrams of silver iodine is attached will be heated up. The silver iodine will sublimate and small particles of the silver iodine will serve as seeds of nuclei for artificial snow crystals.  
  
Scientists have speculated that there will be very symmetrical snow crystals in weightlessness or that some spherical crystals may be formed in space, but no one knows the correct answer. The snow crystals formed in space will be recorded on videotape with four TV cameras and four video tape recorders (VTRs). The lenses of the TV camera will magnify the images of the crystals. The experiment is expected to contribute to crystallography, especially the crystal growth of semi-conductors or other materials from a vapor source.  
  
  
**Seed Experiment** \- a $3,000, two and a half cubic-foot experiment by the George W. Park Seed Co. of Greenwood, S.C.  
  
The Park Seed Co. will send 11.3 kg (25 lb.) of common fruit and vegetable seeds into orbit. The 40 varieties -- from potatoes to sweet corn -- will be aboard the Shuttle, according to George Park Jr., assistant vice president. Park explained that 21st Century space stations and lunar bases will have to grow their own food from seeds in special, enclosed environments because food itself is too bulky to carry into space. As a result, the Park Co. believes there's a market in the future.  
  
The firm's primary objective is to determine how seeds must be packaged to withstand space flight. While nothing will be grown in the seed experiment, seeds will be germinated once they are returned to earth. Two other identical groups of seeds left on the ground also will be studied for comparison. Some of the seeds are packaged in simple Dacron bags, and others are sealed airtight in plastic pouches. One seed batch will be packed along the perimeter of the metal Getaway Special canister that houses the experiment, leaving it exposed to severe temperatures and cosmic radiation. Another batch of seeds will be sealed in the center of the canister where there is greater shielding from the space environment.  
  
Researchers with the seed company plan to study the effects of the extreme temperature changes and radiation on the seeds. In some instances, extra doses of radiation may be beneficial to farmers, Park explained, who welcome a greater probability of seed mutations. With mutations come a genetic diversity that might mean hardier breeds of plants, he said. Extreme fluctuations in temperatures, on the other hand, he explained, might take their toll. Park believes this experiment will provide some ground rules for the future transport of food in space.  
  
  
**Scenic FAST** \- (FAST meaning FAlcon Shuttle Test) a $10,000, five cubic-foot experiment designed by U.S. Air Force Academy cadets at Colorado Springs. The payload contains six separate experiments.  
  
The six experiments being conducted by the U.S. Air Force Academy cadets were developed in an engineering design course during the past five years. Four of the experiments are controlled by an internal sequencer, while the other two will be turned on separately. The two have independent battery power. The responsibility of integrating all of the experiments and preparing them for spaceflight is in the hands of Maj. John E. Hatelid, an Assistant Professor of Astronautics and six First Class (Senior) cadets.  
  
The experiments, in sequence, and their project cadets are:  
  
• Metal Beam Joiner - to demonstrate that soldering of beams can be accomplished in space. Cadet First Class Harry N. Gross, 21, Harrisburg, Pa.  
• Metal Alloy - to determine if tin and lead will combine more uniformly in a zero-gravity environment. Cadet First Class Mark Amidon, 21, Coraopolis, Ohio.  
• Foam Metal - to foam metal in zero-gravity forming a metallic sponge. Cadet First Class Richard R. Neel II, 21, Dillonville, Ohio.  
• Metal Purification - to test the effectiveness of the zone-refining methods of purification in a zero-gravity environment. Cadet First Class Joseph M. Streb, 22, Marriottsville, Md.  
• Electroplating - to determine how evenly a copper rod can be plated in a zero-gravity environment. Cadet First Class Lawrence J. Peter, 21, Cincinnati, Ohio.  
• Microbiology - to test the effects of weightlessness and space radiation on micro-organism development. Cadet First Class Kenneth R. Shriner, 21, Livonia. Mich.  
  
At a designated time in the flight, an astronaut will turn on two switches to start the electronically-sequenced experiments. Upon return from orbit, the experiment samples will be compared to base-line samples produced on Earth.  
  
The Getaway Special Program is managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center. Project Manager is James S. Barrowman. Clarke Prouty, also of Goddard, is technical liaison officer. Program Manager at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., is Donna S. Miller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	12. STS-6:preparations

**April 30, 1982** : IUS PATHFINDER AT KSC  
The operational era of the Space Shuttle moves closer with a pathfinder vehicle for the Inertial Upper Stage now at KSC. Known as the IUS, the vehicle is designed to transfer heavier cargo from low Earth orbit to altitudes beyond the orbiter's reach. Interface testing and electrical checkout of the inert pathfinder is now underway in the Vertical Processing Facility.  
  
The IUS does double duty by being usable on either the Space Shuttle or the new Titan 34D rocket to be launched by the Air Force. IUS is a solid fuel stage capable of carrying a satellite weighing up to 5,000 pounds into geosynchronous orbit or boosting spacecraft on interplanetary trajectories. During a Space Shuttle initiated mission, the IUS/spacecraft combination will be in the cargo bay. After reaching low Earth orbit it will be ejected from the orbiter and the IUS will be ignited, functioning as an expendable stage.  
  
Unlike the single-stage Payload Assist Module (PAM) used for lighter payloads, the Inertial Upper Stage is a two-stage vehicle. But like PAM, the solid propellant concept was also chosen for IUS because of lower cost, compact design, simplicity, and inherent safety. The Space Division of the Air Force Systems Command, developer of the vehicle, has awarded a contract to Boeing Aerospace Company for building nine IUS flight vehicles to be used during the 1980's.  
  
The first Space Shuttle launch of the Inertial Upper Stage is planned for STS-6, scheduled for January, 1983. It will boost the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite into geosynchronous orbit from orbiter Challenger, which will be making its maiden flight.

**May 17, 1982** : DELIVERY OF CHALLENGER IMMINENT  
Work on a second Space Shuttle, the Challenger, is nearing completion and the ship will be delivered to NASA late next month, the manufacturer, Rockwell International, said Monday. The 100-ton spaceship is scheduled to roll out of its assembly plant in the desert near Palmdale, California, about June 30, company spokesman Jerry Syverson reported.  
  
Then it will be towed over a desert highway to nearby Edwards Air Force Base – a  half-day journey – to be mounted atop a Boeing 747 jumbo jet for a flight to the launch base at Kennedy Space Center. The ship's first liftoff is scheduled for January. Challenger may still be at Edwards when the first shuttle, Columbia, returns there from its fourth trip into space. The third and fourth shuttles, Discovery and Atlantis, are to be completed in 1983 and 1984, respectively. Each is designed to make 100 or more roundtrips into space.

**June 21, 1982** : FORMATION OF AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND ANNOUNCED  
On this date Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Lew Allen, Jr., announced the impending formation of Air Force Space Command, a single Air Force command that would consolidate and coordinate all Air Force space assets and activities. There had been considerable lobbying for a change in the military space organization and creation of an operational space command within the Air Force for some time. In September 1982, Space Command established its headquarters at Colorado Springs, near the headquarters for NORAD. The establishment of Air Force Space Command was the largest of the space organizational changes during the 1980s, all of which reflected the shift in policy recognizing space as a war-fighting medium.  
  
(In June 1983, the Navy announced that it was creating U.S. Naval Space Command, which it activated on October 1, 1983, and headquartered at Dahlgren, Virginia. Although it consolidated naval space activities, the new Navy command also was intended to ensure the Navy a role in controlling DOD space programs in a unified command at a later date. On September 23, 1985, DOD activated the U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) at Colorado Springs as a unified command composed of Air Force Space Command, Naval Space Command, and the newly created Army Space Agency (which later became Army Space Command). USSPACECOM has the task of consolidating all assets affecting U.S. space activities.)

**June 29, 1982** : CHALLENGER FERRY FLIGHT WILL REFUEL IN HOUSTON  
America’s newest Space Shuttle, the Challenger, will stop over at Ellington Air Force Base, Houston, Texas, July 4 en route to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The arrival of Challenger atop her 747 carrier aircraft is scheduled to come on the same afternoon as welcoming ceremonies for STS-4 crewmen Thomas K. Mattingly and Henry W. Hartsfield following completion of their seven-day orbital mission in the Space Shuttle Columbia.  
  
The last visit of an orbiter to Ellington came in March 1978 with the three-day stop of Orbiter Vehicle 101, the Enterprise, after her flights in the Approach and Landing Tests. Some 210,000 people attended that open house. Barring schedule changes due to weather or mission contingencies, Challenger is scheduled to depart Edwards Air Force Base, California, at approximately 12:45 p.m. CDT and arrive at Ellington at approximately 4:45 p.m. CDT July 4.  
  
The STS-4 crew is scheduled to leave Edwards around 3 p.m. CDT and arrive at Ellington at approximately 6 p.m. CDT. Welcoming ceremonies will begin with the crew arrival. The general public will be permitted access to the ceremonies only through Ellington’s main gate beginning at 2 p.m. CDT. Other gates will be closed. The 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft/Challenger combination will leave Ellington for the Kennedy Space Center sometime the morning of July 5.

**June 30, 1982** : TO BOLDLY GO WHERE COLUMBIA HAS GONE BEFORE  
With a Marine Corps band playing the theme from _Star Trek_ , America's new, improved-model Space Shuttle, was delivered to NASA Wednesday (Jun. 30) in ceremonies outside the Rockwell International assembly hangar. Paul J. Weitz, who will command Challenger on her maiden flight next January, accepted a symbolic key to the shuttle's hatch on behalf of "all us taxpayers who are footing the bill for this magnificent flying machine."  
  
George Jeffs, president of Rockwell's North American Space Operations, congratulated more than 1,000 employees for meeting the delivery schedule set 2 1/2 years ago and referred to the veteran Columbia orbiting high overhead. "That baby was built out here, too," he said. "This means we now have a fleet of Space Shuttles," said Rep. William Thomas (R-California). "As small as it is right now, it is going to grow."  
  
Weitz said Columbia's current flight, last of four test missions, means "basically we are getting down to the business of operating these things in space." Challenger, mounted atop a modified jumbo jet, is to be flown next week from Edwards Air Force Base to Kennedy Space Center where NASA will add her big engines and ready her for space flight.  
  
Though it looks identical to Columbia, this new shuttle is a bit different. Rockwell says the most important change is that Challenger is certified "operational" -- the ship and its onboard systems are supposed to make at least 100 flights before requiring a major overhaul. Columbia's systems, considered development models, are not certified for 100 missions. But, NASA says, once Challenger is on the job early next year, the veteran spaceship will be taken out of service and its systems upgraded.

**July 5, 1982** : A LEAN AND CLEAN FYLING MACHINE  
It's a leaner, cleaner flying machine than its predecessor. But the shuttle Challenger, which arrived at the sweltering Kennedy Space Center Monday (July 5) morning on the spine of a Boeing 747, is so far unchallenged by the rigors of Earth orbit. Almost 1,000 space center workers and their families made themselves comfortable with lawn chairs and picnic coolers near the three-mile-long shuttle runway when the Challenger-747 duo made a graceful but dusty touchdown at 11:48 a.m. EDT.  
  
Shuttle veteran Columbia will return to the space center from Edwards Air Force Base, California, July 16. Space center director Dick Smith predicted her next flight, scheduled for November 11, could be pushed ahead as much as three weeks. "I want to beat it a few weeks. We'll be ready," he said. The new, improved 1983 model shuttle will make its flying debut when the Challenger roars from Kennedy Space Center in January.

**July 7, 1982** : TAIL CONE ON HEAVY DUTY  
Engineers worked Wednesday to remove a tail cone from the Space Shuttle Challenger for shipment to California and installation on the shuttle Columbia, which needs it for a cross-country trip next week. The tail cone, which fits over the spacecraft's main engine pods to improve its aerodynamics during shipping, will be dismantled and flown to Edwards Air Force Base by the end of the week, Kennedy Space Center spokesman Dick Young said.  
  
It was installed on Challenger for her flight from California on Sunday and Monday bolted atop a modified Boeing 747 jetliner. Columbia, which completed her fourth and final test mission Sunday, also will be returned to Kennedy flying piggyback on the ferry plane. Challenger's first orbital flight is scheduled for January. Work on Challenger will continue as Columbia is prepared for her fifth mission, set for November. After that, Columbia will be taken out of service temporarily for refurbishment. Young said Columbia was drained of fuel and propellants Wednesday in preparation for her trip to Kennedy. She is scheduled to leave California on July 15 on the overnight return trip to her launch site.

**July 16, 1982** : LANDSAT 4 LAUNCHED FROM VANDENBERG  
The fourth Earth-scanning Landsat was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, today. Landsat 4 is designed to continuously collect accurate information on Earth resources – information useful in land use planning, exploration and agriculture. After completing its three-year mission, Landsat 4 is designed to be retrieved by the Space Shuttle.

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From 435 miles up, the face of Earth looms silent and immense as the diagnosis machine passes over from north to south in lockstep with the Sun. Servos whir and reaction wheels spin inside the spacecraft as a high gain antenna seeks a target thousands of miles away. A large solar array presents itself to the Sun, while inside a processing system ingests streams of data beamed in from space, and busily calculates its own three-dimensional position and velocity.  
  
Elsewhere on the spacecraft, two scanning systems are methodically taking the planet’s pulse. They measure chlorophyll absorption and moisture content in plants to provide an overview of their health worldwide; they distinguish between such crops as barley, wheat, corn and soybeans and help keep track of global food production; they identify possible sites for the presence of minerals like copper, zinc, lea  ans uranium; they distinguish between clouds and snow cover, and are able to chronicle huge stands of trees by type and condition.  
  
Rangelands are evaluated by virtue of their temperature and the types of light they reflect. Uncharted islands are catalogued, atolls are measured, and the topography of water bottom along the coastlines is plotted. Each day, 300 scenes of the planet are generated in this manner, as a hundred different sensors measure the reflected light and thermal energy of some four million square miles of the Earth. The same swath of ground is measured again 16 days later, and over the operational lifetime of the spacecraft, this will result in the most complete chronicle of the status of Earth that humankind has ever produced.  
  
That, in sum, is the purpose and the promise of Landsat 4, launched into near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit within 840 milliseconds of its scheduled lift-off time July 16. The flawless launch was the first use of the new uprated Delta 3920 rocket, burt with a host of new capabilities built in, that’s but the lead item in a long list of firsts associated with Landsat 4.  
  
One of the most important aspects of the new Earth-sensing satellite is the presence of a thematic mapper. The mapper represents what NASA thinks of as an aggressive experiment, in which a highly touted and very promising piece of equipment will be stringently tested in space, compared to another device, the multispectral scanner (which has been the standard Landsat sensor in the past), and eventually turned over to the Department of Commerce for operational use. The thematic mapper fills a gap in the remote sensing capability that has in the past been pointed up by such projects as AgRISTARS, in which JSC plays a large part.  
  
For the first time, a powerful instrument will be sending back images in the visible and near infrared bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will also make major contributions through the presence of new spectral bands in the blue-green portion of the spectrum, allowing more precise vegetation analysis and natural color images for the first time on a Landsat.  
  
The mapper will also incorporate greater spatial and radiometric resolution. The mapper’s spatial resolution is an instantaneous field-of-view of 98 square feet, compared to 240 square feet for the multispectral scanners on the first three Landsats. This means the thematic mapper can inventory much smaller fields, such as those which are commonly five to ten acres in the eastern and southern U.S. and countries like China, India, and in Europe and South America.  
  
The upshot is that features once blurry on previous Landsat images will now be much better defined. Urban planners, for instance, will be able to study changing land use patterns with greater accuracy, as will hydrologists investigating storm water management.  
  
Insofar as radiometric resolution is concerned, Landsat 4 will present a threefold improvement over previous satellites. Energy reflected or emitted from ground targets is a basic key to how all this data is gathered and interpreted. In order to improve the use of this data, it is important that the energy be quantified on as many discreet levels as possible. Landsat 4 can detect differences in reflected light energy as small as 0.5 percent, which translates into a 10 to 20 percent improvement over multispectral scanner classifications used on earlier Landsats.  
  
In order to assess all of these improvements, the program calls for a period of investigations performed by NASA. Software in the thematic mapper, for instance, will likely go through a series of modifications as scientists learn how to finesse the instrument. The investigations will run through 1985 and involve 25 different avenues of research, pursued by universities, industry, other government agencies and foreign scientists, in many cases at no cost to NASA due to extremely high interest in the success of Landsat 4.

—————

**August 12, 1982** : JANUARY IS STILL THE TARGET  
The Space Shuttle Columbia and the two satellites it will carry into orbit should make their November 11 date in space, but the shuttle Challenger may not get off the ground in time in January, engineers said Thursday (Aug. 12). A delay of several days in the delivery of shuttle main engines to Kennedy Space Center could hold up the Challenger's maiden flight, now set for January 20, said James Harrington, chief of orbiter operations.  
  
"I have no feel for when the main engines will get here," he said, adding that the slowness in some testing procedures also might hold up the spacecraft's first flight. "I don't know if it can fly in January but we're going to try," said Harrington, who gave reporters a guided tour of the shuttle hangar Thursday morning. Officials of Rockwell International, the prime shuttle contractor, said they were optimistic the Challenger would be ready for launch on time and predicted engines would be at the space center in plenty of time for installation in the spacecraft.

Both bays in the Orbiter Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center are humming these days as both Columbia and Challenger undergo preparations for STS-5 and STS-6, respectively. Columbia is in the midst of modification procedures to prepare her for the first operational mission. Challenger, meanwhile, is undergoing an exhaustive dynamic stability test this week, one of the major milestones in certifying her for flight. One goal of the test is to check the aerodynamic surfaces on the orbiter. The last heavyweight External Tank has arrived at KSC and will be used for STS-7. Newer lightweight tanks will begin service on STS-6 and continue with the flight of STS-8 and beyond. The STS-6 tank will arrive next month.

**September 9, 1982** : WORK ON CHALLENGER WILL PICK UP  
Space Shuttle Columbia made a mad dash between rainstorms from her "barn" to the Vehicle Assembly Building Thursday afternoon. Along with the weather, a stuck VAB door pushed Columbia's first steps back almost a day. Challenger is currently being worked on in the same hangar Columbia left behind. "The work on Challenger will pick up a bit now that Columbia's out of the barn," Harrington said.

**September 17, 1982** : TEST SUCCESSFUL ON FIRST CHALLENGER MAIN ENGINE  
The first of three Space Shuttle Main Engines for Orbiter Vehicle 099, the Challenger, was successfully ignited last week in the first of a series of acceptance tests. The 1.5-second ignition test on engine No. 2012 was designed to verify the start sequence. Each of the engines will undergo such a test, as well as a 100-second calibration and a 500-second endurance test approximating the performance necessary to help loft orbiters into low Earth orbit.  
  
During the calibration and endurance test firings at the National Space Technology Laboratories in Mississippi, the engines will be throttled up to a power level nine percent higher than the thrust capability of the engines now in use on Columbia. This additional thrust capability, which will allow Challenger to carry heavier payloads into space, is the result of development work done since Columbia’s engines were accepted in 1979.  
  
Each engine must complete a series of test firings, and mechanical and electrical checkouts before being certified for flight by the Marshall Space Flight Center. After acceptance they will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center for installation aboard Challenger, now scheduled for her maiden voyage in January 1983. Engine No. 2012 is expected to be shipped later this month. The remaining two engines, numbers 2015 and 2011, are scheduled for shipment in October. The Space Shuttle Main Engines are manufactured and tested by the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International under contract to Marshall.

**October 29, 1982** : STS-6 LAUNCH PROCESSING CONTINUES  
Assembly of the STS-6 vehicle began October 1 with build-up of the twin Solid Rocket Boosters on the deck of Mobile Launcher Platform-2. Previous Shuttle vehicles were launched from MLP-1. Stacking of the twin booster rockets was completed October 14. The External Tank was mated with the boosters on October 21. The process took about 16 hours. In a related development, the first main engine for Challenger arrived at the Cape last week and was installed over the weekend. The second main engine was scheduled to arrive sometime this week from the test facility at the National Space Technology Laboratories in Mississippi.  
  
In other work on OV-099, technicians continued the checkout of the orbiter’s TACAN system, the No.1 water coolant loop and the newly installed Ku-band antenna. Major work completed in the OPF included the installation of the OMS and RCS pods, which were reported on dock at KSC on September 3, and a Dynamic Stability Test, during which the orbiter was put on special jacks which allow it to move as if airborne for an exhaustive series of tests of the flight control surface system.

**November 10, 1982** : STRONGER, LIGHTER AND MORE STABLE  
As shuttle Columbia touches down Tuesday on the California lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base, her sister ship Challenger will leave its cocoon at Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility for final pre-launch preparations. Challenger, actually built before Columbia, will wheel to KSC's Vehicle Assembly Building to mate with its fuel tank, Solid Rocket Boosters and Mobile Launch Platform for its inaugural January 24 dash into space.  
  
Challenger, which ferried to KSC atop a 747 jumbo jet in early July, was originally constructed as a "Structural Test Article," said NASA public affairs official Brian Welch in Houston. "The original idea was to build an orbiter and shake it till it fell apart to see what it would take structurally," Welch said. However, plans changed and Challenger was readied for operational flight.  
  
Basically, the Challenger is stronger, lighter, and more stable than her forerunner. "Columbia can take up to six vertical Gs, meaning how hard you can pop it on the runway when you land," Welch explained. "Challenger can take eight (vertical Gs)." In the cockpit, Challenger will not use the ejection seats currently installed in Columbia but deactivated for the fifth flight. Challenger's flight instruments also differ from Columbia's -- another transition from test development to practical operation. Columbia's myriad sensors and measurement instruments have been replaced by mission support gear in Challenger like the Ku-band antenna system used to track satellites.

**November 16, 1982** : A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR MILA  
In a remote southwest corner of the Kennedy Space Center, physically isolated from the mainstream of KSC activity and unseen by most employees, the round eyes of four large dish antennas constantly scan the heavens. Originally code-designated "MILA," for Merritt Island Launch Annex, the call sign of this tracking station has endured since 1965, when it was built to support the Apollo-Saturn program.  
  
MILA currently stays busy supporting numerous scientific spacecraft, including the Solar Maximum Mission, ISEE-1, Nimbus 7, Landsat 4, and both Dynamic Explorer spacecraft. Its past credits include support of both Viking missions to Mars and the two Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn.  
  
MILA is called the "launch station" when it receives data during the early phases of the Space Shuttle or Atlas-Centaur and Delta flights. Part of NASA's worldwide Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network (STDN) system, it is managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center and operated by Bendix Field Engineering Corporation. A total of 127 personnel staff the station 24 hours-a-day, seven-days-a week. The computers.and other equipment at MILA provide uplink/downlink voice, telemetry, commands, data and television for the Space Shuttle. Domestic satellite relay equipment forwards these transmissions to Mission Control or other NASA Centers.  
  
In addition, MILA is responsible for the operation of a smaller tracking station at Ponce de Leon Inlet, which is active only during Space Shuttle launches. The exhaust plume from the Solid Rocket Boosters hampers Shuttle communications at KSC from T+1:00 to T+2:00. The Ponce de Leon station can "see" the shuttle from a side angle, to fill this one minute communications gap.  
  
Other equipment recently installed at the MILA site are antennas to communicate with two Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), which will be launched next year on STS-6 and STS-8. In the future, spacecraft that are to use the TDRS system will be in contact with it through MILA while still on the ground, to verify compatibility before the launch. This includes the Space Shuttle.  
  
The TDRS system can relay data from any satellite below geosynchronous altitude (22,240 miles above the equator), providing coverage for about 85 percent of most such orbits. This will replace most of the usual tracking from ground stations, which can provide support only when a spacecraft is within sight.  
  
The Goddard STDN system, of which MILA is a member, will continue to provide tracking for satellites with highly elliptical orbits. These have an apoapsis, or high point, beyond the geosynchronous orbit of TDRS. An example of such a satellite is ISEE-3, with an orbit that has extended up to 900,000 miles from Earth.  
  
The future for the MILA tracking station is a bright one. Because the TDRS system cannot relay Space Shuttle communications until T+8 minutes, after External Tank separation, it will continue to function as the launch station for the Space Shuttle. The Delta and Atlas-Centaur vehicles are not TDRS-compatible, and MILA will serve them also.  
  
During the fall of 1983, equipment from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be installed at MILA to support the Delta launch of the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorer (AMPTE) spacecraft in 1984. This same JPL equipment will be used again for the Galileo Jupiter Orbiter/Probe and the International Solar Polar Mission, both scheduled for launch aboard the Space Shuttle in 1985. During a period when other stations are cutting back to part-time or reduced hours operations, MILA continues to be a full-time 24-hour tracking facility.

**November 29, 1982** : STS-6 LAUNCH PROCESSING CONTINUES  
An Orbiter Integrated Test was successfully conducted November 5 to 7 to verify compatibility of Challenger’s various subsystems. Space Shuttle workers moved the orbiter to the Vehicle Assembly Building November 23 to mate it with the External Tank and Solid Rocket Boosters in preparation for its first space flight and the sixth in the shuttle series. A number of minor problems in cockpit systems and main landing gear hydraulics delayed the move that had been planned for November 17.  
  
A partial Shuttle Interface Test was conducted from Nov. 27 till today to verify the mechanical, fluid and electrical connections between the orbiter and its other elements. The test will be completed at the launch site. NASA wants to move Challenger to the launch pad tomorrow for a Flight Readiness Firing of its three main engines before Christmas. A date of December 21 is the target for this firing.  
  
The main engines had been a pacing item in the schedule. The third engine completed its 500-second test at National Space Technology Laboratories in Mississippi, October 31. It arrived here November 11, shortly after the lift-off of the orbiter Columbia on her fifth mission. These engines are qualified at 104% of rated thrust. Engines in Columbia are qualified at 100% thrust, which is 375,000 pounds each at sea level.

 


	13. STS-6:rollout

**Tuesday, November 30, 1982 (Rollout to Pad 39A) – Mistborn**     
  
PAO: This is Kennedy Space Center. The view we’re now observing on the television is not a fairyland scene, but it is actually Pad 39A and the Space Shuttle Challenger. Challenger was rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building this morning about 4:19 a.m. Eastern Time and is now moving the 3 1/2 miles to the launch pad. Dense ground fog today is making the scene a little bit surrealistic, but beautiful nonetheless.   
  
The orbiter Challenger, its external fuel tank and Solid Rocket Boosters are just barely poking out of the fog this morning, but is rolling at about one mile an hour to the launch pad. The trip takes about six to seven hours; Challenger should be at the launch pad at about 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time this morning and should be hard down on its launching posts about noon.  
  
Workers will immediately begin connecting the orbiter to ground connections, both mechanical, pneumatic, fluid and electrical, and then will begin checking out the orbiter in preparation for its first launch in late January. 

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Space Shuttle Challenger, cutting through the predawn fog like an apparition, made its way to the launch pad Tuesday. The fully assembled shuttle, 12,000 pounds lighter than its predecessor Columbia, completed a three-mile ride from its hangar to launch pad 39A by 10:35 a.m. EST. By the Christmas holidays, engineers are scheduled to test fire Challenger's three main engines and the shuttle's payload should be stowed inside the cargo bay by the first day of the year, said Jim Ball, NASA spokesman. "By then (the test firing), we should firm up the launch date," Ball said. Liftoff is tentatively scheduled for January 24. The Shuttle began its journey over a bed of crushed Alabama river rock at 4:19 a.m. EST. The 184-foot-high spaceship was propped on a steel-gray Mobile Launch Platform. This platform recently was refurbished from its last mission -- the 1973 launch of Skylab.

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 **December 2, 1982** : MEANWHILE AT PAD 39B  
PRC Systems Sevices Co. and the architectural and engineering firm Briel, Rhame, Poynter and Houser Inc. will design ground support equipment for Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center under a $5.9 million NASA contract. PRC and BRPH will pursue the project in a joint venture. The contract period began November 22 and continues to June 30, 1983.  
  
Pad 39B was last used in the Apollo space program. It is being modified for use by the Space Shuttle and the necessary work is expected to be completed in early 1986. Thus far, all Space Shuttle launches have been from Pad 39A, for which both PRC and BRPH designed support equipment and modifications under earlier NASA contracts. The new contract calls for such items as components to regulate and distribute gases and propellants to the launch pad, a fuel cell servicing system and electrical control panels for the liquid oxygen and hydrogen systems.

 **December 9, 1982** : ROCKWELL SEEKS NEW SPACE SHUTTLE CONTRACT  
Rockwell International Corporation has formed a new Shuttle Launch Operations Division that will pursue the NASA contract for the launch and turnaround operations of the Space Shuttle, the company announced Thursday (Dec. 9). A new division, to have its headquarters in Cocoa Beach, intends to conduct its activities both at Kennedy Space Center and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Richard Schwartz will be the vice president and general manager of the division and will report directly to the president of Rockwell's Space Transportation and Systems Group.  
  
Rockwell intends to seek the upcoming NASA contract for the preparation, launch, landing and servicing of the reusable orbiter. That contract, worth a potential $2.7 billion to the private company selected, is a necessity to achieve cost savings, now that the shuttle program is in its operational phase. The spacecraft itself is manufactured by Rockwell International at its Palmdale, California, plant. Rockwell spokesman Robert Gordon said the company is confident that the experience and the efficiency it achieved in past shuttle activities will give it a competitive advantage in the race for the NASA contract.  
  
Rockwell is not without competition. Last month, Lockheed Corporation announced the formation of the Lockheed Space Operations Company, a new division based in Titusville. Lockheed has a working agreement with Grumman Aerospace, Pan American Airlines and Thiokol Corporation to unite their efforts in seeking the processing contract. A similar team effort combines Rockwell with Boeing Services International, Martin Marietta, United Space Boosters Inc. and United Airlines. That lineup was unveiled in November and, with the exception of United Airlines, all have current NASA contracts for launch work and processing at KSC.  
  
NASA is expected to issue a request for proposals in January, a formal soliciting of plans from the various competitors outlining how they intend to provide the needed services. The actual awarding of the contract is scheduled for late 1983. The Rockwell Shuttle Launch Operations Division initially will be comprised of three basic elements -- Rockwell's KSC Launch Operations that does shuttle processing work now, Rockwell's Vandenberg AFB field operations and the shuttle contract proposal team effort. Establishment of the new division was announced by Rockwell Space Operations President George Jeffs.

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 **December 17, 1982** : PLSS FAILURES IDENTIFIED – EVA SET FOR STS-6  
A faulty fan motor sensor and two missing locking devices have been blamed for the problems with two spacesuits which forced cancellation of the extravehicular activity (EVA) on STS-5. A sensor regulating the speed of a fan motor in Mission Specialist Joe Allen’s Portable Life-Support Subsystem (PLSS – the spacesuit backpack) apparently was degraded by moisture of undetermined origin. The sensor is used to monitor the magnetic current of the fan motor, and when it failed the motor stuck in a mode which Allen described as “motorboating.”  
  
The investigation team, headed by Richard A Colonna, Manager of the Program Operations Office at JSC, also reported last week that two locking devices used to help control pressure in the space suit of Mission Specialist William Lenoir were missing from the spacesuit, although documentation from the contractor indicated the parts had been installed. Although paperwork indicated that the two vital parts – each the size of a grain of rice – had been correctly fitted in the primary oxygen pressure regulator in Lenoir’s PLSS, they were apparently left out during assembly last August by Carlton Controls, Inc. of East Aurora, New York. This resulted in Lenoir’s suit having a pressure level of 3.8 psi rather than the planned 4.3 psi level.  
  
“Since they didn’t really know what was causing the low pressure level, they were scared to let the guys go outside,” explained astronaut Don Peterson, slated to fly on Challenger STS-6. “But it wasn’t really the kind of thing that would have been dangerous. I mean, 3.8, you’d have been fine at 3.8; 4.3 gives you a little more margin if you get a leak. It also gives you a little better protection against the bends, because you’re not going to quite as low a pressure.”  
  
Shuttle program officials have now officially extended STS-6 from about 72 hours to about five days to allow for another try at an EVA. Mission Specialists Story Musgrave, EV1, and Don Peterson, EV2, are scheduled to make two translations of Challenger’s payload bay, evaluate suit mobility and communications and perform various tasks related to the payload cradle, a payload restraint device and tests in translating with a mass.  
  
The investigating team will continue its inquiry and is expected to recommend measures designed to increase quality control. More frequent and intense testing during space suit production at Hamilton Standard, the primary contractor, Carlton Controls and at JSC and the Kennedy Space Center will be recommended, Colonna said. Plans for additional checks inside the shuttle’s airlock on the day before launch were laid out.


	14. STS-6:flight readiness firings

TEST FIRING WILL BE A CONFIDENCE BUILDER EXERCISE FOR NASA

Al O’Hara, director for launch and landing operations at KSC, today laid out the plan for tomorrow’s Flight Readiness Firing of Challenger’s main engines. “Our schedule is to get to a T-0 tomorrow morning at 11 o’clock for the first firing of the engines,” he said at a press briefing. “At 12 noon Eastern Time today we’ll go into a ten hour 40 minute-hold. And that will be culminated in the retraction of the RSS from the orbiter. Tonight about 10:40 p.m. will start the rotation of the RSS. And after that’s complete we’ll start our terminal count.”  
  
“The countdown is very similar to a launch countdown,” O’Hara told reporters. “We have a one-hour hold at T-3 hours; we have a ten-minute hold at T-20 minutes; and we have another ten-minute hold at T-9.”

The primary objective of the FRF is to check the shuttle vehicle integrity and the performance of the main propulsion system. That includes the orbiter systems, the External Tank and the SSMEs. “We have some secondary objectives,” said O’Hara. Among them will be a test of the total system, including ground facilities and the second Mobile Launch Platform being used for the first time during STS-6. Technicians will also closely watch the orbiters aft compartment in order to detect and evaluate any leakage in the hydrogen system.  
  
“And we’ll determine what we call the ‘twang’ of the vehicle,” explained O’Hara. “When the SSMEs ignite, the vehicle has a tendency to tip toward the north. So, we’ll assure ourselves that the twang response of the stack is as predicted; and that in turn determines when the SRBs are ignited for launch. But we don’t expect to have any change in that timing sequence as result of the test.” The APU hydraulic turbines will also be fired on the orbiter during the FRF in order to check the hydraulics and the flight control systems.  
  
“The main engines will ignite, as they will on launch day, at T-6.8 seconds,” said O’Hara. “And they plan to go up to 100 percent thrust and stay there for approximately twenty seconds. The first engine, engine one, will cut off at 18.2, and the second and third engine will cut off at 23.8 seconds. Now, on the clock you’ll see that a little bit earlier because, remember, it does start 6.8 seconds prior to T-0.”

After the test firing is completed there will be an extensive review of the data. “That takes about 48 hours,” predicted O’Hara. “Some time around Monday noon we’ll know whether or not the data looks good. We’ll then go into the actual physical inspection of the engines.” Technicians expect to have the two most important checks completed by noon on Wednesday. “And that is the torquing of the high-speed turbo pumps,” said O’Hara. “We torque those to make sure that we haven’t had any degradation in those pumps. And we’ll also do some other inspections that are very critical. We have to look at some turbine blades to make sure there hasn’t been any erosion on those blades.”  
  
According to Mr. O’Hara, at that point in time NASA will have confidence in the scheduling of remaining flight preparations from that point to the launch of mission STS-6. “If all goes well on Saturday, next week we will run a portion of our dynamic testing that we had scheduled for the VAB that we’ve deferred to the pad. We’ll complete that on Wednesday.”

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**Saturday, December 18, 1982 (Flight Readiness Firing 1) – A Resounding Success**

PAO: APU configuration is complete, ready for APU start… T-5 minutes 30 seconds and counting, onboard operational tape recorders have been turned on. They’ll record shuttle system performance during the test and will be dumped after the test is complete for analysis. This is usually done by Mission Control in Houston, but for this test it’s being done from a firing room console… T-5 minutes six seconds and counting, the acquisition cameras in the crew module have been turned on… T-5 minutes, we have a GLS go for APU start, and we have APU start. APUs provide the pressure to the three orbiter hydraulic systems which in turn are used to move the main engine nozzles and aerosurfaces… T-4 minutes 40 seconds and counting… T-4 minutes 30 seconds, main engine fuel valve heaters have been turned off in preparation for engine start…Auxiliary Power Units are up, looking very good… T-4 minutes, purge sequence four has started – final helium purge sequence on the main engines has begun in preparation for engine start; launch pad film cameras have been activated…  The aerosurface profile test started at T-3 minutes 55 seconds… all the elevons, the body flap, speed brake and rudder are moved through a preprogrammed pattern… T-3 minutes 30 seconds, the shuttle going on internal power, still being supplied with ground reactants through the T-0 umbilical; the vehicle will go on internal reactants at the T-2 minutes 35 seconds mark… main engine gimbal check has been initiated, engine nozzles being run through a preprogrammed pattern at this time…T-3 minutes and counting… T-2 minutes 55 seconds, External Tank liquid pre-pressurization has started… retraction of the gaseous oxygen vent arm is initiated at the T-2 minutes 55 second point; this is the cap which fits over the External Tank to prevent ice buildup over the oxygen vents… T-2 minutes 21 seconds and counting, fuel cell ground supplies have been cut off; the fuel cells now operating on internal reactants… T-2 minutes 15 seconds and counting, main engines have been moved to the start position… T-2 minutes and counting… T-1 minute 57 seconds, liquid hydrogen replenish has been terminated, pre-pressurization to flight level is underway…T-1 minute 40 seconds and counting… T-1 minute 30 seconds and counting… T-1 minute and 20 seconds and counting… T-1 minute and counting, the firing system that releases the sound suppression water onto the pad has been armed… T-50 seconds and counting… T-45 seconds and counting… T-40 seconds, SRB development flight recorders are being turned on… T-37, gaseous oxygen vent arm will not be retracted on this particular test… T-31 seconds, we have a go from LPS for auto sequence start; four primary flight computers taking over main control of the terminal count. Final LPS command for engine start will occur at approximately T-10 seconds…T-15 seconds and counting… T-10, go for main engine start… hydrogen burn igniters are… we have engine start on the first main engine… zero… T-0, engines throttled at 100 percent, all three engines up and burning… T+5 seconds, engines continuing to burn… T+10 seconds… 12… the first cut-off T minus… plus 15 seconds, engine cut-off… and engines two and three also cut off at T+16.8 seconds…T+25 seconds, GLS safing now in progress; we are continuing to run the APUs. We’ll now turn them up to high speed for about a minute and a half high speed run… APU high speed is verified, T+45 seconds… T+1 minute, APUs continuing to run; they’ll run for approximately the T+2 minute mark… T+1 minute 25 seconds… continuing with the test of the orbiter Auxiliary Power Units into the plus time… verifying those units are go for flight… T+1 minute 45 seconds… T+2 minutes, the GLS critical safing has been completed… and we have shut down the… all three of the orbiter Auxiliary Power Units. This basically completes the Flight Readiness Firing. There are still a number of hours of safing operations yet to be completed; we do have to drain the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants out of the External Tank. But other than that the test appeared to have gone very successfully. The engines were run at the proper levels, engine No. 1 being cut off at 15 seconds, engines two and three simultaneously being cut off at 16.8 seconds as planned… This was a major test in clearing the way for the sixth launch of the Space Shuttle, still planned for a launch in late January. In the time between now and its launch there are still many work items that have to be accomplished, including the delivery and installation of Challenger’s cargo in the orbiter’s payload bay. The cargo is scheduled for delivery to the launch pad on the 29th of this month, right after the Christmas break. It will be installed in the orbiters payload bay approximately two weeks later. Following some of the verification tests that accompany the insertion of the payload into the orbiter they’ll be ready to begin their final preparations for picking up the countdown and for launch.

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 **Harris** : Good afternoon. I’m Hugh Harris at the Kennedy Space Center and I’d like to welcome you to the post-Flight Readiness Firing press briefing. And to tell you what happened today and to answer all of your questions is Al O’Hara, who is the director of launch and landing operations for the Kennedy Space Center, and James Odom, who is the deputy manager for the shuttle project from the Marshall Space Flight Center. We’ll begin with Al O’Hara.  
  
**O’Hara** : Good afternoon. We are very happy to report to you that the Flight Readiness Firing for the Challenger was successful and on time. And as far as we know at this moment, based upon the real-time data we reviewed, the test looks like a resounding success. So, I think we’re in fine shape to move on in our processing toward a late-January launch.  
  
Since we met yesterday morning the countdown went rather well over the evening. We had a few minor GSE problems, but nothing of any significance. And we picked up the propellant loading for the FRF on schedule, and got just a little bit behind in the LOX loading area because of some just red-line changes that we needed to make and some things that were not fully understood before we went into the test. But they were very, very minor.  
  
We sent our ice team in to do the inspection and Jim will tell you probably a little more about that in just a moment. Everything looked great there and the firing was on time, the engines ran the specified length of time and generated the amount of thrust we’d predicted. And the APUs ran well, had no problems to our knowledge.  
  
Again, let me caution you that this is based upon the real-time information from the firing room and from the support rooms that we got on-net about 30 minutes after T-zero. So, as the day progresses and more information get available that may change. But up to this point everything looks great.  
  
So, we’re in a process now of getting ready and inspect the engines, and as I told you yesterday, we’ll have that inspection complete by Wednesday noon. So, we’re very happy with the test; it went very well. I thought the test team did well and they’re very happy to have this test out of the way before Christmas. That was our goal back in October. So, we’re very happy to have that milestone met. So, Hugh, I guess we’ll turn it over to Jim. Jim, tell us what you might see from the Marshall point of view.  
  
**Odom** : Okay. I’d like to echo what you’ve heard from Al. We certainly saw a good count, a very smooth one, with really only minor problems that obviously didn’t even require any use of any of the hold times. As far as the propulsion systems, that we at Marshall are responsible for, all the engine parameters, the turbine speeds, the turbine temps all looked very good, very, very nominal.  
  
We’ve got a number of this data in real-time, and as you’ve heard from Al, we’ve only had time to evaluate just that data that we get literally in real-time as the test is running.  Those all looked very good; all of the instrumentation systems on both the tank, the Solid Rocket Boosters, looked very good. Al of that was nominal and we saw absolutely no problem with any of that data.  
  
We did send the ice team out to inspect the tank. In this particular test we do run a proof test on the insulation on the External Tank and take it above the flight load to proof integrity of that system for the launch. Inspections showed no anomalies that we can see at this time. We obviously have not had a chance to review all the photographic data, but all of the on-site data that we looked at when the team was out there looks very good.  
  
We will be going into the engines over the weekend and early part of next week and doing a more detailed inspection, not only of the data, but also of the hardware to then ascertain if there’s anything that needs to be done prior to the launch. So, as you’ve heard from Al, we’re very pleased not only with the countdown, but also with the performance of all our hardware, and we see no reason that we shouldn’t be ready to support the launch.

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It was twenty seconds of Christmas cheer for NASA engineers Saturday morning as they throttled the shuttle Challenger's three main engines. It was the last big test in the preparation of the Challenger for her mission in late January. The new engines on the new orbiter never had been test fired together.  
  
Final results of the punctual 11:00 a.m. EST test should be ready by noon Wednesday after technicians crawl through the 7-foot-wide engine cavities and assess any damage. By then NASA officials in Washington will set a date for lift-off. At this stage, NASA expects a launch no earlier than January 27. Al O'Hara, director of shuttle launch operations, said results were so encouraging that Challenger's five-day mission could be extended a few days.  
  
For NASA brass including General James Abrahamson, a NASA associate administrator watching in the shuttle firing room, the test was handled no differently than a launch. Although there were no astronauts in the cockpit, there was plenty of engine roar and mashed potato-like smoke that flooded Launch Pad 39A. A now-routine launch countdown began some 56 hours earlier and by late Friday night the service structure that covers the Challenger was moved back. Early Saturday morning the 15-story fuel tank was filled with 1.5 million gallons of liquid propellant, but only about 60,000 gallons were used in the test firing.  
  
During launch the Challenger's engines will operate eight minutes. At first glance the Challenger's three engines are no different from the Columbia's. But they do provide four percent more thrust -- about 390,000 pounds per engine. Aside from putting the engines through their paces, the Flight Readiness Firing also tested the new lightweight fuel tank. Weighing about 67,000 pounds, it's 10,000 pounds lighter than its predecessor.  
  
The plan is for the TDRS/IUS cargo to go to the pad on December 27, followed by stand-alone testing in the Payload Changeout Room during that same week. Following the Christmas break payload operations will continue on January 2, 1983. On January 10, engineers will conduct a simulated countdown and launch with Challenger astronauts Paul Weitz, Karol Bobko, Donald Peterson and Story Musgrave.

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 **December 27, 1982** : TDRS-A MOVED TO PAD 39A  
The tracking satellite destined for a trip into Earth orbit from the Space Shuttle Challenger was moved to launch pad 39A Monday. The 5,000-pound NASA satellite was hoisted to a specially designed changeout room at the top of the pad near the shuttle By January 8, the satellite will be loaded into the 60-foot-long cargo bay, said Mark Hess, NASA spokesman. Work at the pad this week will include a check of the satellite's electrical and computer systems, Hess said. Preparations are made to service the TDRS' attitude control system with hydrazine fuel.  
  
The TDRS satellite was rolled out at TRW's California plant on November 4 and arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on November 14. It is attached to a rocket that will propel it to a height of 22,000 miles – far beyond the shuttle's reach – after it leaves the Challenger. Launch of the Challenger still is set for no earlier than January 27. NASA officials said they will announce a firm date early next month.

 **January 7, 1983** : STS-6 LAUNCH SLIPS AS LEAK CHECKS CONTINUE  
Launch of the STS-6 mission has been postponed from late January to late February to allow adequate time to pinpoint the source of a hydrogen leak discovered after the Flight Readiness Firing last month. Today a second FRF has been scheduled for late January as a confirming measure in preparing the new orbiter Challenger for launch.  
  
Following the first test, it was generally thought that the hydrogen gas was from an external source which, because of vibrations and current conditions during the twenty seconds of firing, had found its way back into the aft area behind the engines’ domed heat shields. Instrumentation will be added inside and outside the orbiter's aft compartment to determine if the hydrogen is coming from an internal or external source; and determine as closely as possible the location of the leakage if it is internal to Challenger's aft engine compartment.  
  
After a three-hour teleconference between officials in Washington, Houston, and at the Kennedy Space Center, shuttle program director Lt. General James Abrahamson said, “We have determined that a confirming Flight Readiness Firing is the prudent course.” The second firing test of Challenger's main engines was predicted to cost NASA $1.5 million, according to Edwin Dale, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C.  
  
During the initial FRF on December 18, Challenger’s three main engines roared to life for 20 seconds, but a high level of gaseous hydrogen in the aft compartment of the orbiter caused concern among NASA management. Since that first test firing, numerous leak checks have been conducted and several minor leaks repaired. These included a leak which developed when a cooling tube split on the rim of the No. 3 main engine nozzle. Repairs on the cooling tube cracks are scheduled to be completed with a final epoxy application to seal the weld by mid-January.  
  
The December 18 FRF was the culmination of a 56-hour terminal countdown demonstration which included full fueling of the shuttle’s External Tank in a process nearly identical to that of normal launch procedures.  
  
The primary payload for STS-6, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, was transported to the pad along with its Inertial Upper Stage booster December 27 in preparation for loading into the payload bay of Challenger. A series of tests were performed to verify communications and mechanical links and were judged successful. Fueling of the IUS was postponed, however, and the TDRS will be moved back to the Vertical Processing Facility to safeguard the payload during the second engine firing.  
  
Meanwhile, on January 4, Mobile Launcher Platform-1, the platform used for the first five shuttle missions, was moved into the Vehicle Assembly building for the start of the STS-7 stacking process.

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Twenty-five years ago this month, the United States sent its first satellite into space; Explorer 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral’s LC 26 aboard a modified Jupiter-C rocket (Juno 1) on January 31, 1958, at 10:48 p.m. EST. Its orbit was elliptical, with a close point to Earth of 225 miles (360 km) and a far point of 1575 miles (2535 km). Explorer  would travel 58,376 times around the Earth before finally succumbing to the planet’s gravity in April 1970. Compared with the Russian Sputniks, Explorer 1 was puny; together with its upper stage it weighed less than 31 lb. (14 kg).  
  
But what the Explorer lacked in size, it more than made up for in sophistication. Its components were highly miniaturized, a situation dictated by the weight limitation imposed by the relatively low-powered launch rocket. The Russians, with their powerful rocket boosters, were subjected to no such limitations. They had no need to develop sophisticated miniaturized instruments. It was to be their loss, since excellence of instrumentation would prove to be key element in future space exploration.  
  
Explorer 1 did indeed have excellent instruments, notably a Geiger counter for detecting cosmic rays and other radiation. It reported that a great “belt” of radiation girdles the Earth. Later satellites confirmed this, finding in fact that there are two major regions of dense radiation. They are now called the Van Allen belts after James Van Allen, who devised Explorer’s experiment.  
  
An attempt by von Braun’s Army team to launch a second satellite with another Juno 1 on March 5, 1958, ended in failure. Twelve days later it was the Navy’s turn again, which was struggling at the Cape since 1955 to get into orbit. Last time, on December 6, 1957, their Vanguard rocket less than two seconds into the flight had lost thrust, had fallen back to the launch pad and ignominiously exploded in a spectacular fireball.  
  
This time they were successful, launching a satellite called Vanguard 1 into orbit. The Russians ridiculed this “Grapefruit” of a satellite, and in truth it was scarcely much bigger than one. But, metaphorically speaking, Vanguard 1 had the last laugh. The first satellite powered by solar cells, it remained active for six years. Not only that, but the prolonged observations of Vanguard in its very stable orbit led to new information about the Earth’s shape. Finally, whereas the early Sputniks plummeted back to Earth within a few months, Vanguard 1 is still up there, the oldest satellite in orbit. Not until sometime in the 40th century will the “grapefruit” satellite eventually return to Earth.

March 1958 was a key month in the history of the U.S. space program for another reason. On the 5th a proposal was submitted to President Eisenhower for the creation of an agency to implement a national space program. The American Rocket Society had called for one a few day after Sputnik 1 was launched October 4, 1957, as had the National Academy of Sciences some weeks later. Now at least this was in prospect.  
  
Who was to run the program, however? Was it to be the military, who had developed the first space rockets, or a civilian organization? The consensus of opinion came down in favor of a civilian agency, especially in view of the fact that the basis for one already existed in the National Advisory Committee foe Aeronautics (NACA), a body set up as long ago as 1915.  
  
NACA, which had been created to coordinate aviation research in the U.S., had by the 1950s become increasingly involved in missile research and was already contemplating moving into space exploration. It had extensive existing facilities around the country, and long-standing relationships with industry and with the military. Above all it had a peaceful, research-oriented image.  
  
So, on April 2, 1958, a bill to establish a National Aeronautics and Space Agency, with NACA as its nucleus, to continue aeronautics research and push forward a national space program, went before Congress. During three months of debate on the bill, heavily influenced by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas), the structure of the new body was refined, and the “Agency” became an “Administration.” Then both houses passed the bill, and President Eisenhower signed the legislation to bring the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into being on July 29, 1958.

When NASA first opened for business on October 1, 1958, it inherited the vast organization that already existed with the NACA, and a work force of some 8,000 people. The main facilities comprised Wallops Island Station (now the Wallops Flight Facility) off the coast of Virginia; the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now Langley Research Center) at Hampton, Virginia; the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (now Lewis Research Center) at Cleveland, Ohio; the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (now Ames Research Center) at Moffet Field, California; and the High Speed Flight Station (now Dryden Flight Research Center) at Edwards AFB, California.  
  
Over the next few years the structure of NASA as it is today was gradually forged. The various elements of space exploration in existing military research and development establishments were transferred to NASA management and sometimes relocated. First to come under NASA’s control in December 1958 was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which evolved from facilities where Professor Theodore von Kaman of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and his students had carried out “rather odd experiments in the Arroyo Seco north of Pasadena” in the mid-1930. It had built the Explorer 1 satellite. Caltech operated JPL for NASA, as it still does.  
  
In May 1959 key Vanguard personnel from the Naval Research Laboratory and other space scientists and engineers involved in launching and tracking spacecraft were brought together at a new facility at Greenbelt, Maryland, just outside Washington D.C. First called the Beltsville Space Center, it was later renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center in honor of the American rocket pioneer. At the Cape, Vanguard launch personnel formed the nucleus of NASA’s first launch team, under the management of the Goddard center.  
  
Wernher von Braun’s Army team at Huntsville, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), was by this time planning a super booster rocket. The Army decided it was not interested and, in October 1959, the project and von Braun’s team were transferred to the NASA space program. The new organization at Huntsville was known as the Marshall Space Flight Center, with von Braun as Director. It was specifically assigned the task of developing heavy launch vehicles for the burgeoning man-in-space program.

The official announcement that the United States was to embark on a manned spaceflight program came on October 7, 1958, just six days after the formation of NASA. After the announcement, NASA’s first Administrator Keith Glennan summed up the resolve of the nation when he said: “Let’s get on with it.” In fact, the ball had already started rolling. The essential features of the first phase of the program had been worked out, largely by a team at Langley, later to become the Space Task Group, and a preliminary design for a suitable spacecraft had been selected. By the end of November 1958 the program had been christened “Project Mercury,” after the fleet-footed messenger of the gods in Roman mythology.  
  
By 1961 the Space Task Group had expanded to such an extent that new premises were urgently needed. A site just outside Houston was finally selected, and STG personnel began transferring there in October. The facility was completed within two years. Originally known as the Manned Spacecraft Center, it was later renamed the Johnson Space Center after President Lyndon B. Johnson, who as a Senator played a vital role in the establishment of NASA.  
  
Meanwhile, Cape Canaveral was being transformed from scrubland into a major launching center. Launch complexes were springing up the length and breadth of the peninsula. Redstones, Jupiters, Thors, Atlases and Titans – IRBMs and ICBMs – blasted in turn off the launch pads.

By 1962, however, it had become evident that the facilities at the Cape could not support the developing manned space program. After consideration of a variety of possible new launch sites – in California, Texas, on Caribbean islands, and even in Hawaii – Merritt Island, inland from the Cape, was eventually chosen. Work then began to convert this mosquito-infested swamp region into the world’s premier spaceport.  
  
The new facility, first known as the Launch Operations Center, was later renamed the Kennedy Space Center after the assassinated U.S. President. It could not have been better named for it was John F. Kennedy who committed the nation to the biggest technological challenge in history: to send a human being to another world, the Moon, and bring him back safely to Earth.

Five scheduled Space Shuttle flights and 18 unmanned launches will make the anniversary year 1983 a busy time for launch teams throughout the NASA system. Shuttle orbiter Challenger, Columbia’s sister ship, will make its debut early in the year with its first orbital flight scheduled for sometime in February. The flight, designated STS-6, will deliver into orbit the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. Eventually, a network of three such spacecraft (including an on-orbit spare) will permit nearly continuous two-way communications with orbiting shuttles.  
  
Challenger is also slated to fly STS-7, currently set for late April, and STS-8, scheduled for early July. The STS-7 mission will launch two communications satellites, one for Canada, the other for Indonesia. Also carried on STS-7 will be a pallet of NASA-sponsored experiments and a German experimental satellite called SPAS-01. Challenger’s third flight, STS-8, is scheduled to begin with a spectacular nighttime lift-off. In the cargo bay will be the second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-B, and a combined communications and weather satellite being launched for India.  
  
While Challenger is operating, the orbiter Columbia will be undergoing modifications at Kennedy Space Center. Columbia, which logged more than ten million miles during four development flights and the Space Shuttle’s first operational missions, will return to service on the STS-9 Spacelab 1 mission with an international crew of six. The research mission, scheduled for October, will be the first flight of the European-built Spacelab. The final shuttle flight of the year will be flown by Challenger in December with Department of Defense cargo aboard.

At the same time operational shuttle activity is picking up, expendable vehicle launch teams will be busy with a roster of unmanned missions. Eight launches of the workhorse Delta rocket are forecast for 1983, along with two Atlas-Centaur, two Atlas-F and six Scout launches.  
  
An Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) to be launched late in January on a Delta rocket from the Western Space and Missile Center in California leads the 1983 expendable vehicles schedule. The Intelsat V-F will also be boosted into orbit from Cape Canaveral no earlier than March 10, using an Atlas-Centaur rocket. In March, the NOAA-E will be launched aboard an Atlas rocket from the Western Space and Missile Center. The payload includes search and rescue instruments developed by Canada and France. It will join the Soviet Union’s COSPAS satellite, already in orbit, to form an experimental international satellite-aided search and rescue system.  
  
RCA-F in March and NOAA’s GOES-F, Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, in April will be launched from the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral on Delta rockets. In May, a Scout rocket will be used to launch the San Marco-D/L, an international cooperative project with Italy, from the San Marco Range in the Indian Ocean. The June launch of the DNA mission will use a Scout as the booster from the Western Space and Missile Center, while the Hughes communications satellite Galaxy-A will be carried by a Delta rocket from the Eastern Space and Missile Center in Florida.

The Scout will also put the Navy-21 into orbit for the Department of Defense, during July from the Western Space and Missile Center, and a Delta will be used to hoist Telstar-3A aloft for American Telephone & Telegraph in late July from NASA’s Florida facility. Three unmanned missions are scheduled for August, including a DOD payload designated AF-1 (ITV) using a Scout, for launch from Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia. A NOAA weather satellite, NOAA-E, using an Atlas, will be launched from Western Space and Missile Center and the RCA-G will be carried by a Delta rocket from its Florida launch site.  
  
The Hughes communications satellite, Galaxy-B, set for a mid-September launch and the military communications satellite NATO-III-D, scheduled for October, will both be launched from the Eastern Space and Missile Center using Delta rockets. The DOD has scheduled Navy-22 for a fourth quarter launch from the Western Space and Missile Center and the Air Force will launch its satellite AF-2 from the Wallops Flight Facility using a Scout as the carrier vehicle. The current schedule for unmanned vehicles for 1983 ends with a December launch of Intelsat VA-A aboard an Atlas-Centaur in Florida.

——-

While the rest of the world anxiously watched and waited, the Soviets struggled last week to keep one of their spy satellites from plunging prematurely and dangerously back to Earth. The high drama was reminiscent of NASA's unsuccessful attempt to control the fall of Skylab four years ago, when fragments of the unmanned U.S. space station harmlessly hit the Australian outback. But the problem with the Soviet satellite had a particularly frightening element. Aboard the faltering red star was some lethal cargo: a miniature nuclear power plant that could spray deadly radioactive material over a wide swath of the Earth.  
  
The object of the international concern was a spacecraft innocuously dubbed Cosmos 1402. Launched last August, it is a five-ton bundle of electronics, including a powerful radar used by the Soviets to track U.S. naval vessels. In 1978 a similar satellite, Cosmos 954, scattered radioactive fragments over Canada's Northwest Territories. Though no one was killed or injured, the embarrassed Soviets paid Canada $3 million to help defray the cost of the difficult cleanup.  
  
Initially, Soviet officials brushed off Western concern about the satellite: But as evidence accumulated from tracking stations that Cosmos 1402 was falling, Moscow finally admitted that the satellite was in trouble. Although they insisted that the reactor, containing 100 Ib. of nuclear fuel, would burn up in the atmosphere, U.S. officials said that some radioactive debris would reach the ground. As a precaution, they mobilized special teams to gather the "hot" material. Meanwhile, Soviet ground controllers were radioing a flood of signals to the errant craft, which is tumbling wildly through space at an altitude of about 150 miles, in an effort to control it. Unless they succeed, Pentagon sources said, Cosmos 1402 will make a fiery, meteor-like reentry into the atmosphere before month's end, possibly around January 24.  
  
Because of the highly inclined plane of the satellite's orbit (about 65° to the equator), Cosmos 1402 could crash almost anywhere, from as far north as Greenland to the southernmost tip of South America. That orbital path precluded any rescue attempt by the new U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger; even if it could be launched in time, it would be unable to achieve so tilted an orbit. As to just when Cosmos 1402 might strike, one U.S. intelligence officer said: "We'll be able to make some hard calculations about the time and place of landing when the satellite's period (the time it takes to make a complete swing around the earth) degrades to 87.4 minutes." Last week Cosmos 1402 was circling once every 89.3 minutes.  
  
The Soviets have been launching ocean-surveillance satellites at the rate of two or more a year. Their radars and other sensors are not run by electricity from solar panels or chemical fuel cells, the power sources used by American spy satellites like the Air Force's Big Bird. Instead, the Soviet satellites rely on a type of small, portable nuclear reactor called Topaz (after the gemstone), which uses as its fuel enriched uranium 235, the same highly radioactive material "burned" by nuclear power plants on the ground.  
  
During the international storm that followed the crash of Cosmos 954, the Soviets briefly stopped launching nuclear-powered spy satellites, but flights resumed in 1980. Moscow insists that the reactors do not violate any treaty. The U.S. has not pressed the issue. For one thing, the Defense Department is itself considering using reactors to power laser and particle-beam weapons that may eventually be deployed in space. Also, NASA has already sent nuclear power packs to the Moon and uses them regularly on robot spacecraft to the outer planets, like the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond. (Reason: sunlight is too weak to be tapped as an energy source.)  
  
To American space scientists, the real problem is not that the Soviets are sending reactors into space. As Jerry Grey, spokesman for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, points out, it is that they are doing it "so damned stupidly" – operating the nuclear-powered satellites at such low altitudes that they easily become vulnerable to premature return. (If an object is launched high enough to avoid the upper atmosphere's braking effects, it can orbit indefinitely, like the Moon.) At times, in order to do closeup snooping, the Soviets let their satellites descend to as low as 100 miles, then boost them up with onboard rockets to prevent any further orbital "decay."  
  
But there are limits to the sorties a satellite can make; usually it will exhaust its rocket fuel after six or seven months. When that happens, the Soviet controllers radio commands that explode the satellite into nuclear and nonnuclear components. The nonnuclear parts are allowed to sink back into the atmosphere, where most of the metal burns up in the frictional heat of reentry. The reactor is lifted with one last spurt of rocket fuel to an altitude of 500 to 600 miles, where it can drift safely for hundreds of years.  
  
By late last month it became clear to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, whose cameras, radars and computers keep track of the more than 5,000 objects now in orbit, that Cosmos 1402 was not following this scenario. When it broke into three pieces on Dec. 28, all lingered in the same orbit, perhaps because of a booster failure. With each swing around the Earth, the nuclear reactor's orbit shrank a little more. Some U.S. officials speculate that the Soviets might be able to destroy the reactor with a remaining explosive charge, or even a burst from one of their killer satellites, a risky procedure that would leave a sinking radioactive cloud in orbit. Or they might have enough maneuvering fuel left to steer the lethal package into the sea. At week's end the fate of Cosmos 1402, as well as of the people in its path, was still very much up in the air.

 **January 24** : U.S. SCANS INDIAN OCEAN FOR RADIATION  
United States aircraft and ships patrolled the Indian Ocean today to check for any increased atmospheric radiation from the nuclear-powered Soviet satellite's fiery plunge back to the Earth. The Defense Department said it had no reports yet on the survey results. Nor did it have any new information on whether any fragments of the four-ton craft survived the reentry yesterday and reached the water. The ''impact area'' was so far from land, the Pentagon said, that the satellite's final plunge could not be observed.  
  
Meanwhile, the North American Aerospace Defense Command turned its attention to tracking the remaining segment of Cosmos 1402, which Soviet officials have said is the nuclear fuel core. This smaller section, probably weighing less than 1,000 pounds, could enter the atmosphere as early as next week. According to the command's calculations, the fuel-core section is circling the Earth in an orbit ranging from a high of 132 miles to a low of 127 miles. As with the rest of the Cosmos, the section is traveling each day over all parts of the world between 65 degrees north latitude and 65 degrees south. American tracking analysts have not released any new reentry time predictions since the one they made last week, which established a ''reentry window'' of Feb. 7-13.  
  
The Soviet Union yesterday forecast that the fragment including the fuel core of the satellite's reactor should enter the dense layers of the atmosphere between Feb. 3 and Feb. 8. The Soviet statement continued to emphasize that the core would disintegrate and burn up well before it reached the surface. Earlier Soviet statements also said that the ''radiation situation will be within the limits recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection,'' a United Nations body that studied the issue. Pentagon officials have generally agreed with the Soviet assurances, noting that in a somewhat similar incident in 1978, the uranium fuel of Cosmos 954 apparently burned up completely high in the atmosphere. But some fragments of the satellite's structure did survive and fall over the sparsely populated Northwest Territories of Canada.  
  
Although the American and Soviet Governments issued several seemingly conflicting statements on Cosmos 1402 in the last three weeks, there was a tendency now among American officials to accept Soviet predictions. After all, a Soviet statement Friday night was remarkably accurate in forecasting not only the time but the general area where the main body of the satellite would fall. It predicted the satellite would come down late Sunday (Jan. 23) over the ''region of the Arabian Sea.'' The satellite, in fact, plunged through the lower, dense atmosphere soon after it passed over the Arabian Sea, coming down far south of the Indian subcontinent.  
  
Maj. Douglas Kennett, a Pentagon spokesman, said that American space experts were not too surprised by the Soviet accuracy. ''It's their satellite,'' he said. ''They knew the satellite's characteristics, which we didn't know. They have an excellent tracking system. They ought to be able to predict that.'' Geoffrey Perry of Kettering, England, an amateur space tracker with considerable experience in the field, called the prediction ''amazing,'' adding, ''I compliment them on their estimate.''  
  
The main body of Cosmos 1402 had been tumbling and apparently out of control since Dec. 28. A Soviet attempt to boost the reactor section, including the fuel core, into a higher, safe orbit had failed. Although satellites or pieces of satellites fall out of orbit every week, nearly all of them disintegrate and burn from the friction of their passage through the atmosphere, posing no danger below. It is not known how many fragments ever survive the reentry. So many of the objects fall into the ocean or on unpopulated lands and are never seen, as in the case of Cosmos 1402 yesterday.  
  
Concern over the satellite was heightened, however, because it carried a nuclear reactor and some radioactive pieces of a satellite like it, Cosmos 954, had survived the reentry in 1978 and come down on land. Major Kennett, the chief Pentagon spokesman for the Cosmos watch, said, ''I don't think we'll ever know if any of this Cosmos reached land. That sort of material would be sitting now on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.''

 **February 8** : COSMOS 1402’s FUEL CORE FALLS “HARMLESSLY”  
The last fragments of Cosmos 1402 vanished in a fiery plunge over the South Atlantic Ocean 1,100 miles east of Brazil early yesterday. Debate promptly began over whether health hazards would be created by the radioactivity it left behind in the upper atmosphere. A short time after reentry, which occurred about 6:10 a.m. EST, a Pentagon spokesman said the 110-pound enriched-uranium core had apparently ''burned harmlessly.'' This final piece of the satellite to fall never caused as much worry as the large section that fell on Jan. 23, and its demise came about more or less as predicted. The Pentagon said reconnaissance planes would check the atmosphere in the South Atlantic for any signs of increased levels of radioactivity. The debris broke up at 19 degrees south latitude, 22 degrees west longitude.  
  
Despite an apparent end to the drama, which began in late December after a vain Soviet attempt to boost the nuclear reactor into a higher orbit, where it was to remain for 500 years, the core has not ''burnt up'' but was broken down into a cloud of radioactive dust.  
  
Does it pose a danger to human health? Experts answer the question in radically different ways. One school holds there is no health risk, while another says the dispersed core, carried by winds around the globe, will eventually result in a few cases of genetic damage and death resulting from cancer.  
  
Moreover, since both the United States and the Soviet Union plan to send other nuclear payloads into space, some groups say the health question may arise again in more dramatic form. The Progressive Space Forum, a Washington-based group that lobbies for a negotiated demilitarization of space, asserts that one type of accident with an American spacecraft could result in 40,000 deaths. In contrast, Government scientists, while acknowledging past problems, say the launching and use of American and Soviet nuclearpowered satellites is becoming safer with each passing year.  
  
Cosmos 1402 is one of eight nuclear craft that have plunged to earth unexpectedly. In 1969, according to the Department of Energy, two Soviet Moon-bound craft ''burned out in the atmosphere with the detected release of high-altitude radiation.'' One predecessor of Cosmos 1402 plunged into the Pacific Ocean north of Japan in 1973, and another fell over Canada in 1978. Accidents have also struck the American program. In 1964, a Transit nuclear-powered satellite failed to achieve orbit and broke up over the Indian Ocean. In 1968, a similar fate befell a Nimbus satellite. A final nuclear accident occurred in 1970 when the Apollo 13 moon lander plunged into the Pacific Ocean.  
  
While Soviet failures center on nuclear reactors, the American ones have been with Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, devices that put out power through the natural decay of plutonium. The first American accident touched off an attempt to limit the dangers. Transit's power pack spread 17,000 curies of plutonium 238 throughout the atmosphere. To avert the problem, subsequent RTG.'s were wrapped in a thick metal shield that would stand up to the heat of atmospheric friction. The solution worked well in the next two accidents, according to Dr. Gary L. Bennett of the Energy Department. The power pack from the Nimbus satellite was recovered intact from the Santa Barbara channel off California, and the one from Apollo 13 today rests unopened in Tonga Trench of the Pacific.  
  
Yet unacceptable dangers still remained, according to the General Accounting Office. In 1977 it found that ''emphasis on meeting time schedules and the intense interest in promoting the use of nuclear power in space have resulted in launches of nuclear-powered satellites despite unresolved questions of nuclear safety.'' To date the United States has launched 23 nuclear systems into orbit, while the Soviet Union has launched 18 satellites powered by nuclear reactors.  
  
Critics such as the Progressive Space Forum say that the relative luck of both East and West cannot last much longer. ''Both countries are going in the direction of greater reliance on space nuclear power,'' said John Pike, a member of the Forum's national board, ''and the accidents are likely to increase.'' The gamble for the American program could be quite great, according to Mr. Pike. He said a Martin Marietta Company study of possible risks in launching a plutonium-powered satellite estimated that an accident could result in 40,000 fatal cases of lung cancer.  
  
The Soviet Union, which has had its share of problems, has tried to avert catastrophe by redesigning space reactors. The crash of Cosmos 954 resulted in a 500-mile-long ''footprint'' of radioactive particles across the Canadian outback. The best way to avoid the danger, according to scientists in both the East and the West, is either to boost reactors into orbits high enough so that deadly fission products will have decayed by the time of reentry, or to build reactors so they totally disintegrate in the upper atmosphere. Shields are difficult to build because of pipes and control rods.  
  
A radioactive dust cloud, according to Dr. David Buden of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, will eventually become quite dilute as it disperses in the atmosphere. ''The success of the method can be seen in the absence of excessive exposure following the re-entry of Cosmos 954, when the reactor is thought to have had at least 500,000 curies of fission product activity at shutdown,'' he said.  
  
With the failure of Cosmos 1402, the Soviet Union revealed a new precaution. According to Dr. Oleg M. Belotserkovsky, director of the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute: ''The withdrawl of the fuel core with its radioactive fission products from the reactor insures guaranteed conditions for it to burn up in the dense strata of the atmosphere and for the materials to be dispersed into finely divided particles.''  
  
The question is what happens to the radioactive dust. If it stays suspended in the upper atmosphere, it will eventually decay and become harmless. If, on the other hand, it soon drifts down to earth, entering the food chain and the lungs of humans, it might cause problems. According to the Progressive Space Forum, the long-lasting fission products of Cosmos 1402 are cesium and strontium, up to 50 curies of each. By interpolating from the damaging effects of fallout in the test of atmospheric nuclear weapons, the group estimates that the radioactivity from Cosmos 1402 could eventually result in cases of genetic damage, and anywhere from one to three deaths from radiationinduced cancer. This is a best estimate, and assumes that radioactivity will be distributed uniformly rather than concentrated in some way.  
  
The chief frustration in the fallout calculations is that there is no easy way to know who is right, no way to know if the particles hang harmlessly in the atmosphere or enter the ecosystem and cause cancer. The problem was summed up by a Pentagon spokesman on the crash of Cosmos 1402: ''There's no license plate on this stuff, so we don't know who causes the increase in radioactivity after a while.''

———

**Tuesday, January 25, 1983 (Flight Readiness Firing 2) – A Real Detective Job**

PAO: 9… we have a go for main engine start… 6… we have main engine start… all three engines are up and running… it’s a 20-minute… uh, 20-second firing; we have approximately seven more seconds remaining… at a hundred percent thrust… and we have shutdown; we have shutdown on time…

As in Challenger’s first engine test December 18, engineers at Kennedy Space Center discovered a leak of hydrogen gas in the 18-foot-long compartment just forward of the three main engine nozzles. Lt. General James Abrahamson, Associate Administrator for Spaceflight, said that a late February launch of STS-6 “isn’t necessarily achievable.” The mission was originally scheduled to commence on January 20, 1983. Intensive troubleshooting to find the exact source of the leak will continue, according to Abrahamson.  
  
Following the first Flight Readiness Firing in December, officials at KSC said they found evidence of excess hydrogen in the aft compartment of the orbiter, but did not know if it came from an internal or external source. The second test firing, designed to answer that question. Ruled out the possibility of an external source for the hydrogen, and now the task is pinpointing the cause within the main propulsion system.  
  
Abramson said a third test firing, in keeping with NASA’s conservative approach to flying new vehicles, might be necessary to confirm the safety of the system. “This is a real detective job,” he said, “and one which will be difficult.” The leak found Tuesday was of the same order of magnitude as that discovered following the Dec. 18 test, he added. George Hardy, a representative of the Marshall Space Flight Center, said that beyond the hydrogen leak, the performance of the engines themselves was good in the second firing.  
  
Abrahamson said a number of options exist which could keep the remainder of 1983’s flights on schedule. “There is a lot of flexibility in that schedule,” he said. Officials have considered pulling the main engines from Columbia and installing them in Challenger, but that would be a last resort because it would force a change in mission plans for STS-6, causing a shift to minimum weight and minimum mission configurations. He said it might also be necessary to pull an engine or engines at the pad and either repair them at the Cape or ship them back to the National Space Technology Laboratories for tests, repairs and certification.  
  
Some have also suggested that the roles of flights seven and eight be reversed, in order to assure that both Tracking and Data Relay Satellites are functioning in orbit for the Spacelab mission on STS-9. But Abrahamson expressed an unwillingness to do this, saying that the two satellite customers on STS-7 have schedules which are important to meet. He also said officials working with TDRSS would like to see how the first satellite to be launched on STS-6 operates before sending the second into orbit.  
  
NASA headquarters officials also consider using expendable Delta rockets to put some of the Space Shuttle's communication satellites into space because of the domino effect of delayed shuttle launches. Eventually NASA wants to get out of the Delta launch vehicle program after twelve more flights, but the agency may buy at least three additional Deltas because of shuttle delays. NASA Administrator James M. Beggs must decide how many more Deltas the agency is willing to fund. Contractors asked for an early decision to end uncertainties regarding manpower and supplier contracting.

————

 **January 25** : IRAS LAUNCHED – CLUES GET WARM IN THE SEARCH FOR PLANET X  
Something out there beyond the farthest reaches of the known solar system seems to be tugging at Uranus and Neptune. Some gravitational force keeps perturbing the two giant planets, causing irregularities in their orbits. The force suggests a presence far away and unseen, a large object that may be the long-sought Planet X. Evidence assembled in recent years has led several groups of astronomers to renew the search for the 10th planet. They are devoting more time to visual observations with the 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar in California. They are tracking two Pioneer spacecraft, now approaching the orbit of distant Pluto, to see if variations in their trajectories provide clues to the source of the mysterious force. And they are hoping that a satellite-borne telescope launched last week will detect heat signatures from the planet, or whatever it is out there.  
  
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was boosted aboard a two-stage Delta rocket into a 560-mile-high polar orbit Tuesday night at 6:17 p.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. It represents an $80-million venture by the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. In the next six or seven months, the telescope is expected to conduct a wide-ranging survey of nearly all the sky, detecting sources not of ordinary light, but of infrared radiation, which is invisible to the human eye and largely absorbed by the atmosphere. Scientists thus hope that the new telescope will chart thousands or infrared-emitting objects that have gone undetected stars, interstellar clouds, asteroids and, with any luck, the object that pulls at Uranus and Neptune.  
  
The last time a serious search of the skies was made, it led to the discovery in 1930 of Pluto, the ninth planet. But the story begins more than a century before that, after the discovery of Uranus in 1781 by the English astronomer and musician William Herschel. Until then, the planetary system seemed to end with Saturn. As astronomers observed Uranus, noting irregularities in its orbital path, many speculated that they were witnessing the gravitational pull of an unknown planet. So began the first planetary search based on astronomers’ predictions, which ended in the 1840s with the discovery of Neptune almost simultaneously by English, French and German astronomers.  
  
But Neptune was not massive enough to account entirely for the orbital behavior of Uranus. Indeed, Neptune itself seemed to be affected by a still more remote planet. In the late 19th century, two American astronomers, William H. Pickering and Percival Lowell, predicted the size and approximate location of the trans-Neptunium body, which Lowell called Planet X. Years later, Pluto was detected by Clyde W. Tombaugh working at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Several astronomers, however, suspected it might not be the Planet X of prediction. Subsequent observations proved them right. Pluto was too small to change the orbits of Uranus and Neptune; the combined mass of Pluto and its recently discovered satellite, Charon, is only one-fifth that of Earth’s Moon.  
  
  
Recent calculations by the United States Naval Observatory have confirmed the orbital perturbation exhibited by Uranus and Neptune, which Dr. Thomas C. Van Flandern, an astronomer at the observatory, says could be explained by a single undiscovered planet. He and a colleague, Dr. Robert Harrington, calculate that the 10th planet should be two to five times more massive than Earth and have a highly elliptical orbit that takes it some 5 billion miles beyond that of Pluto hardly next-door but still within the gravitational influence of the Sun.  
  
Some astronomers have reacted cautiously to the 10th-planet predictions. They remember the long, futile quest for the planet Vulcan inside the orbit of Mercury; Vulcan, it turned out, did not exist. They wonder why such a large object as a 10th planet escaped the exhaustive survey by Mr. Tombaugh, who is sure it is not in the two-thirds of the sky he examined. But according to Dr. Ray T. Reynolds of the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, other astronomers are so sure of the 10th planet, they think theres nothing left but to name it.  
  
At a scientific meeting last summer, 10th-planet partisans tended to prevail. Alternative explanations for the outer-planet perturbations were offered. The something out there, some scientists said, might be an unseen black hole or neutron star passing through the Suns vicinity. Defenders of the 10th planet parried the suggestions. Material falling into the gravitational field of a black hole, the remains of a very massive star after its complete gravitational collapse, should give off detectable X-rays, they noted; no X-rays have been detected. A neutron star, a less massive star that has collapsed to a highly dense state, should affect the courses of comets, they said, yet no such changes have been observed.  
  
More credence was given to the hypothesis that a brown dwarf star accounts for the mysterious force. This is the informal name astronomers give to celestial bodies that were not massive enough for their thermonuclear furnaces to ignite; perhaps like the huge planet Jupiter, they just missed being self-illuminating stars. Most stars are paired, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Sun has a dim companion. Moreover, a brown dwarf in the neighborhood might not reflect enough light to be seen far away, said Dr. John Anderson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Its gravitational forces, however, should produce energy detectable by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite.  
  
Whatever the mysterious force, be it a brown dwarf or a large planet, Dr. Anderson said he was quite optimistic that the infrared telescope might find it and that the Pioneer spacecraft could supply an estimate of the objects mass. Of course, no one can be sure that even this discovery would define the outermost boundary of the solar system.

 **A Cold Look at the Cosmos**  
  
“The scientists are walking three feet in the air. They're absolutely ecstatic." So said a NASA spokesman last week as data began pouring down from one of the most unusual instruments ever launched into space. The cause of the jubilation is a one-ton cylindrical-shaped object called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS. A first of its kind, the solar-powered spy in the sky will literally show the Universe in a new light.  
  
Peering into the heavens from its orbital perch, the $180 million robot observatory "sees" infrared light, or heat waves, a form of radiation totally beyond the range of human vision (and that of most living things other than rattlesnakes). Even cold objects radiate some heat, making it possible for IRAS to sense celestial bodies that are all but undetectable in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.  
  
Until now such observations have been made with extreme difficulty. Since water in the Earth's atmosphere absorbs most infrared light, astronomers had to send up instrument-packed balloons and rockets, go aloft in specially equipped planes or perform infrared work in high-altitude observatories like the one atop Hawaii's 14,000-ft. Mauna Kea volcano. But thanks to some extremely innovative, indeed, out of this world, engineering, IRAS bypasses the obscuring atmosphere entirely.  
  
To prevent its own heat, as well as that of space, from interfering with observations of far-off infrared sources, IRAS' sensitive electronic devices must be kept supercold. The telescope's array of detectors, plus its primary lens, a 22-in. mirror, are tucked inside a thermos bottle-like vessel filled with pressurized liquid helium, which keeps the entire mechanism at 4° above absolute zero (—459.7° F). The detectors are so responsive they could spot a tiny electric bulb on the planet Pluto, nearly 4 billion miles away.  
  
Such sensitivity poses hazards. A fleeting, accidental glance at the sun or the earth could burn out the telescope. Even the strong reflected light of the moon or a bright planet like Jupiter would ruin the observations. For protection, IRAS has a highly polished gold-plated sun shield. But its main insurance is its precise course. Circling the Earth once every 103 minutes at an altitude of 560 miles in an orbit that carries it from pole to pole, IRAS roughly follows the line on the earth's surface where day meets night. Along this pathway, the telescope can always face 90° away from the sun, yet catch rays of sunlight on its solar panels to make electricity to power itself.  
  
A decade in the planning, the telescope was built and launched in the U.S., while the rest of the spacecraft comes from The Netherlands. Twice a day IRAS' recorded observations, stored on tape by its computers, are "dumped" in a burst of radio signals as it passes above a ground station at Chilton, England. The signals are retransmitted via a communications satellite to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for detailed computer analysis.  
  
In orbit since Jan. 25, the satellite became operational last week when, on command from the British tracking station, the telescope's cover was successfully exploded away. Two quick test scans produced such a flood of data that cheering broke out in the Chilton control room. Said Caltech's Gerry Neugebauer, IRAS' co-chief scientist, "Everything is going even better than we thought it would."  
  
This week IRAS begins the first formal infrared survey of the entire sky, which should become an important guide for future observations. Before it exhausts its helium supply, the telescope is expected to spot as many as a million heavenly objects. IRAS will observe young cool stars now hidden behind veils of tiny dust particles that block ordinary light. It will also study old stars near the end of their lives. Such observations could help clarify the mysteries of stellar birth and death. Closer to home, it may spot the long-sought Planet X, which some astronomers suspect is lurking beyond Pluto.  
  
The orbiting eye should also help establish the true size of our Milky Way galaxy and discover distant galaxies and quasars. By identifying unknown sources of energy and adding data on the Universe's mass, IRAS may help settle the grandest question of all: whether the Universe will expand indefinitely or collapse upon itself under the remorseless tug of its own gravity.

———

 **February 11** : LEAK SOURCE FOUND – STS-6 MARCH LAUNCH SET

Discovery of a small crack in the combustion chamber manifold of the No. 1 main engine on the orbiter Challenger has cleared the way for an early-March launch of STS-6. On January 29, KSC spokesman Dick Young reported that technicians had found the hairline crack, about 3/4 of an inch long, in the main combustion chamber of engine 2011, which is at the top of the triangular array of three main engines. Analysis showed the crack to be the major source of excess hydrogen which accumulated in the engine compartment during two Flight Readiness Firings in December and January for the new orbiter.  
  
Based on otherwise satisfactory performance of the engines during the two firings, officials have ruled out the need for a third FRF before launch. Engine 2011 was removed at the pad February 4 and taken back to the Vehicle Assembly Building. There its High-Pressure Oxidizer Turbopump was removed and installed on the replacement engine, 2016, which arrived from Mississippi the same day. The nozzle on Challenger’s No. 3 engine was also removed and replaced with the nozzle from engine 2011. Engine 2016 was inspected in the VAB and taken to the pad, where it was installed on Challenger Wednesday (Feb. 9).

Another milestone occurred during the week when the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite and its Inertial Upper Stage booster were transported back to the pad on Friday (Feb.4) and installed in the Payload Changeout Room the following day. The payload has been to Pad 39A once before, but was removed and taken back to the Vertical Processing Facility on January 15 when the decision was made to conduct the second engine firing.  
  
On Tuesday (Feb. 8), engineers picked up a critical test to verify the shuttle’s ability to communicate with and receive commands from Houston. In parallel with the test, payload test conductors verified communications links between TDRS and the primary backup Payload Operations Control Centers. During the all-day Mission Control Interface Test, Houston flight controllers sent commands to Challenger’s guidance computers through a satellite link between Challenger, the Merritt Island Tracking Station and Mission Control. Air-to-ground voice checks were also performed.  
  
The Inertial Upper Stage checks were also completed during the week, and hydrazine was scheduled to be loaded into the TDRS spacecraft beginning today.

 


	15. STS-6:final preparations

**February 20** : BRITAIN’S PRINCE ANDREW AND FRIEND VISIT KSC  
Britain's Prince Andrew and a buddy from the Royal Navy - Sub-Lt. Ian Hendry - got a special private tour of the Kennedy Space Center and its Space Shuttle facilities. Andrew, a helicopter pilot on the Invincible, an antisubmarine aircraft carrier, and Hendry saw the Columbia, now being refurbished in the Orbiter Processing Facility; the massive Vehicle Assembly Building; the Launch Control Center and Challenger being prepared for its first mission.  
  
"He was very enthusiastic about the center," Hugh Harris, KSC spokesman, said. "He is reported to have asked a lot of good questions, based on his background knowledge as a pilot, and seemed to be very knowledgeable about the shuttle program in general."

NASA ON A VERY TIGHT SCHEDULE

Shuttle program management has decided to proceed with the testing and installation of replacement engine 2017 for the orbiter Challenger and will press for a March 19 or 20 launch date for STS-6, Associate Administrator for Spaceflight Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson said this week.

  
Program officials will also institute a policy of firing shuttle main engines at thrust levels no greater than 104 percent until launches begin from Vandenberg Air Force Base in October 1985. “For a significant and extended period of time, we will cut back to a lower thrust rating,” Abrahamson said. “We don’t need 109 percent until we begin launches at Vandenberg. This gives us an operational margin. The lower thrust levels will not stress the engines so badly and it will avoid a demand on the engine spares.”  
  
Spare engines are in short supply now. One of Challenger’s original complement of three main engines, number 2011, developed a manifold crack in the main combustion chamber and had to be removed. A replacement, engine number 2016, was found to have a progressive leak in the oxidizer heat exchanger and was judged not acceptable for flight.  
  
Fortunately, the only other new engine available, number 2017, was almost through its certification firings and will be shipped to the Cape during the last week in February. Another alternative, using an engine from Columbia, would require a new software package, because of the different thrust levels on OV-099 and OV-102 engines. The software package is being developed and the Columbia engine is being shipped to the Kennedy Space Center as a backup measure, Abrahamson said.  
  
Personnel at the Cape will be shifted from what is essentially a three-shift operation to a four-shift per day operation with work on the weekends when necessary, he said. “We are on a very tight schedule now,” Abrahamson said, “and we want to recover on flights seven and eight.”  
  
The present plan, if STS-6 is launched in late March, is to press for a late-May launch of STS-7 and a late-July launch on STS-8. Two Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, to be launched on flights six and eight, are necessary for a completely successful Spacelab mission on STS-9 in late September and early October. “We need both TDRS for Spacelab, and both need exercise before STS-9. The fallback is to go with only one TDRS if necessary,” he said.

West German payload specialists Ernst Messerschmid and Reinhard Furrer, scheduled to fly aboard Spacelab D-1 in July 1985, today visited the Kennedy Space Center. They are also scheduled to visit Johnson Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, and NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

———

 **March 1** : A MODEST SPACE STATION FOR $4 To $6 BILLION  
The head of NASA's space station study team told Congress that the agency believes it can build and deploy an evolutionary, modest space station at a cost of $4 to $6 billion (in constant dollars) and have it in operation by 1991. "It is NASA's view that a space station will be the next logical step in space and our current activities are directed toward developing sufficient information for Congress and the Administration to make an informed decision on the appropriate course of action," John D. Hodge, director of NASA's Space Station Task Force, told the House Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications.

————-

 **March 4** : STS-6 WILL BE THE FIRST AFTERNOON LAUNCH OF A SHUTTLE  
The launch window for Challenger's maiden launch is expected to be a mere 16.9 minutes from 1:30 p.m. to 1:47 p.m. EST. This would be the first afternoon shuttle launch. The brevity of the launch window - reduced from an original four hours - is determined by the need for daylight landing conditions at an emergency landing site at Dakar, Senegal, near Africa's western-most tip. NASA hopes to send Challenger on its five-day mission sometime between March 26 and March 31.   
  
Meanwhile, NASA announced that "some kind of contaminant" has been observed on Challenger's cargo, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite due for deployment during the STS-6 mission. On February 28 strong winds had whipped across the Cape Canaveral area, breaching the seal between the Rotating Service Structure’s Payload Changeout Room and the Challenger. As a result of the winds a fine layer of particulate matter was deposited on the TDRS. It is currently in the process of being removed.

———

 **March 9** : A SUCCESSFUL DRESS REHEARSAL   
KSC's dress rehearsal for the STS-6 mission went exactly as planned. "Simulated ignition of the Shuttle's main engines came right on time at 2:00 p.m. EST Wednesday (March 9), concluding a flawless 16-hour countdown," said a NASA spokesman. STS-6 crewmen - Commander Paul Weitz, Pilot Karol Bobko, and Mission Specialists Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson - were on hand for the mock lift-off. NASA said no real problems were encountered during the exercise.

———

 **March 11** : SETI RESUMES AT HARVARD’S OAK RIDGE RADIO TELESCOPE  
The search for extraterrestrial life has resumed. For at least the next four years, an 85-foot diameter radio telescope 25 miles west of Boston will scan the stars 24 hours a day, every day, in the most comprehensive search yet for signals from civilizations which may exist – which some believe are certain to exist – elsewhere in the Universe.  
  
Since the 1960s, under the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program, the United States has periodically scanned the heavens for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, but the effort could only be funded for operations which lasted a few hours at a time, and the project was ultimately cancelled by Congress. This latest effort, called “Suitcase SETI” because the equipment being used is relatively small, is being funded by the Planetary Society, a group co-founded two years ago by Cornell astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan and former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Dr. Bruce Murray.  
  
The Oak Ridge radio telescope owned by Harvard University will be hooked to physicist Paul Horowitz’ “Suitcase SETI,” a small but advanced machine which can listen to 128.000 radio channel at once and distinguish between actual messages and the normal radio noises of the Universe. The search will concentrate on those frequencies which scientists consider likely for communication, such as 1.42 gigahertz, the frequency of the hydrogen atom.  
  
The equipment has been tested in a scan of 200 neighboring stars at the Arecibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot radio telescope in Puerto Rico. During the search over the next few years, Horowitz will be able to dial up his computer through a telephone modem in his office and see how the search is going. The odds against picking out intelligent signals from the mass of radio noises in space are immense, but so, some would say, are the odds that sentient life does exist elsewhere in the Universe. “It could require a long-term search,” Sagan said. “Years or decades.”  
  
The Planetary Society, an 110,000-member organization based in Pasadena, California, has already spent $80,000 to prepare the Oak Ridge radio telescope for the search and anticipates another $20,000 a year for operations.  
  
Louis Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, will be at Johnson Space Center Wednesday, March 16, for a program being held in conjunction with the 14th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The program, “Prospects for Planetary Exploration,” is open to conference attendees and members of the Planetary Society and begins at 8 p.m. CST in the Building 2 Visitor Center Auditorium.

As it points serenely skyward from a ridge dotted with apple orchards, the 84-ft.-wide dish appears to be just another space-age antenna. But last week, the Harvard Oak Ridge radio telescope near Boston became the center of a champagne inaugural and worldwide scientific attention. As colleagues and reporters clustered around him inside the observatory's control room, Harvard Physicist Paul Horowitz tapped a few keys on a computer terminal. A minute or so later, a jumble of jagged lines flickered onto a video monitor. They represented the random squawks and beeps of the universe that had just been picked up by the giant antenna. Only slightly disappointed, Horowitz sighed, "Looks like the same old noise."   
  
Despite the inauspicious start, the event was something of a milestone. It marked the beginning of the most sophisticated search yet for evidence of intelligent life in the vast realms of space beyond the earth. Under a pledge of $120,000 from the Planetary Society, an organization of space advocates begun by Astronomer Carl Sagan (Cosmos), Horowitz and his colleagues will be scanning the heavens for the next four years. They hope to pick up some orderly signal, besides the chaotic noise of the stars that would indicate that E.T. (for extraterrestrial) is not just a Hollywood fantasy.   
  
For the past two decades, radio astronomers in the U.S. and abroad, especially the Soviet Union, have conducted dozens of such searches. None have picked up the slightest hint of a signal that might have been given off by a distant planetary civilization orbiting a remote star. Indeed, even diehards like Sagan are forced to concede that there is not a scintilla of hard scientific evidence that life of any kind exists on far-off worlds. But the search efforts so far have admittedly been slapdash, concentrating on only small parts of the sky and tuning in to just a few of the vast range of radio frequencies that might be used for transmissions. Horowitz, who caught the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) bug after Cornell's Sagan lectured on the subject at Harvard, decided to improve the odds. He developed a compact multichannel receiver that can be hooked to a large antenna and can listen to 131,072 closely spaced channels simultaneously.   
  
Even the gifted E.T. could hardly be expected to pick out an intelligent signal in that electronic haystack. But Horowitz, who designed his "Suitcase SETI" in collaboration with scientists at Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley and the NASA Ames Research Center, overcame the difficulty. The telescope's signals can be fed into a computer and rapidly analyzed for the telltale blips that might mean a message. In addition, Horowitz centers his listening on certain "magic" frequencies, like those around the natural radio emissions of the hydrogen atom, which gives off beeps of a precise wave length. These frequencies would presumably be preferred by an advanced civilization for broadcasts because there is little interference in that part of the radio spectrum. In preliminary work at Berkeley, Jill Tarter, using a similar receiver developed under NASA's auspices, picked up a number of tantalizing signals. Virtually all, it turned out, could be explained as local disturbances, as for example the static given off by the ignition of a passing truck.   
  
Until recently, NASA had been blocked from undertaking such cosmic experiments because of the unwavering opposition of Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, who once gave SETI a "Golden Fleece" award as a waste of taxpayer money. But Proxmire eventually relented, thanks to Sagan's own faith in SETI ("an aperture to the future") and to a persuasive argument that there might be welcome byproducts from the work, among them advances in computer technology. NASA will soon begin its own intensive searches, using even larger radio "ears," like the 300-ft. Goldstone dish in the Mojave Desert and the 1,000-ft. Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico. So, E.T, if you are really there, please call your friends.

———

 **March 18** : APRIL 4 ANNOUNCED TO BE CHALLENGER’S NEW LAUNCH DATE  
NASA officials have announced that April 4 is the new date for Space Shuttle Challenger's inaugural launch. Space agency officials found that contamination of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite cargo that Challenger will deploy was not as serious as feared. Ed Smylie, NASA's associate administrator for space tracking and data systems, said the hinges, which allow electricity-generating photovoltaic solar panels to extend upon deployment, were cleaned - as was the cargo bay.  
  
KSC workers finished cleaning particles of sand, salt, dust and other debris on TDRS yesterday and planned to have the photovoltaic solar panels on the satellite retracted again by midnight today. The payload will be returned to the Challenger cargo bay tomorrow. Workers are also expected to begin the final series of leak checks on Challenger’s three main engines today.

———

 **March 23** : STS-9 CREW IS CLOSELY WATCHING TDRS DEVELOPMENTS  
The six-man crew of the maiden Spacelab mission arrived at KSC today to begin two-and-one-half weeks of training for the mission. Crew members include John Young, Commander; Brewster Shaw, Pilot; mission specialists, Dr. Owen Garriott and Dr. Bob Parker; and Payload Specialists Byron Lichtenberg and Ulf Merbold, the first European to fly on an American space mission.   
  
Merbold said that the future European cooperation with the United States depends on the success of the Spacelab mission planned for the fall of 1983. "The best thing for Europe is to demonstrate to the public the value of the scientific mission, and that is to make the first Spacelab mission very successful," said Merbold, a German scientist assigned to the orbiting laboratory's maiden voyage. Merbold said shuttle delays could jeopardize the Spacelab mission if problems hold up launch and testing of the second in a pair of exotic Tracking and Data Relay Satellites the shuttle will take into space.


	16. STS-6:countdown

**March 30** : THE STS-6 COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN  
The final countdown for STS-6 began today at 2:00 p.m. EST and should run for 93 hours, plus an additional 26 1/2 hours for pre-planned holds. KSC chief spokesman Hugh Harris said the long-awaited countdown began "absolutely right on the second," on time. With the call to stations given by NASA Test Director Frank J. Merlino, more than thirty engineers and technicians manned their stations at the LCC. Launch controllers verified that pre-count tests were completed successfully, and preparations were begun to power-up the orbiter and ground support systems. A glitch with a computer program that switches power sources for the batteries on the Inertial Upper Stage rocket that will take Challenger's satellite cargo into orbit has been corrected to prevent a recurrence of the problem.  
  
Along with contractor representatives, NASA support personnel, and telephone installers, the international press began arriving at the Complex 39 press center. Harris said as many as 1500 reporters and camera personnel were expected for the April 4 launch. KSC officials reported that 138 press passes had been issued by 3:50 p.m. on March 30.

 **March 31** : ESSENTIALLY ON SCHEDULE  
NASA Test Director Frank J. Merlino reported that all preparations of Challenger proceeded "essentially on schedule" as the countdown continued toward the spaceplane's launch, still set for April 4 at 1:30 p.m. EST. A heavy rain began at 4:00 a.m. on the 30th, but did not hamper launch teams as they continued readying Challenger, said KSC spokesman Rocky Raab.   
  
Early today, workers began pressurizing fuel and helium tanks on Challenger's Orbital Maneuvering and Reaction Control Systems. That work was finished and technicians began systems closeout. The orbiter's twin mass memory computer units were checked to ascertain whether the units contain the information they were supposed to hold.

 **April 3** : TDRS IS IN GREAT SHAPE  
“I can’t tell you all how happy I am to be here,” Robert O. Aller, TDRSS program director at NASA headquarters, told reporters at today’s prelaunch press briefing. “I’ve had reservations every weekend since January to get this bird off. We’re in great shape. As always happens in these programs, there’s always some little glitch that comes up close to launch. We had a little concern on a gyro earlier in the week. We have that concern no longer, and we’re in good shape.” Underscoring his confidence that everything is going to go well with the launch, Aller announced, “I’m leaving for Houston this afternoon.”  
  
Leonard Gerkowski, Vice President Engineering for SPACECOM, in a short statement shared Aller’s optimism regarding the status of TDRS. “We are sending our telemetry that’s coming back from our spacecraft through the shuttle to our backup control center here at the Cape, as well as to our main ground station in New Mexico. Both stations are continuously monitoring by computer the status of that information. Everything looks good, and we’re ready to go.”

 

 


	17. STS-6:launch day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter covers through the final 10 seconds of the countdown.

**Monday, April 4, 1983 (Launch Day) – America’s Hopes Soaring High**  
  
  _“_ They planned to launch the Challenger on January 22, at nine o’clock in the morning. But they ran into some fuel leak problems and had to postpone the launch several times. And something happened on the 20th of March that meant that they couldn’t launch in the morning anymore. What happened was that highly predictable phenomenon called the vernal equinox; the Sun in effect crossed the Equator, meaning that the angle of the Sun’s rays would be quite different now.  
  
And the angle of the Sun’s rays on the rocket stage that’s going to propel a communications satellite to a high orbit after the astronauts release it from the Challenger’s cargo bay is an important consideration. They don’t want the payload to be exposed to the cold shadows of space for more than 30 minutes during that six-hour transfer period.  
  
The rocket, you see, has an electronic star scanner that serves as its navigation guide. That scanner locks onto certain stars. But the one’s they were supposed to lock onto are to dim now that the Sun had crossed the Equator – dim in comparison with the spring Sun. So they had to select some other stars to lock onto.  
  
That is the sort of problem you feed into a computer. ‘What, oh computer, is the ideal time for a launch to lock on the new stars?’ – The answer came back, ‘1:30 in the afternoon Eastern Standard Time.’ However, that raises some new problems. Because the launch is so much later in the day, that means it is evening in Senegal in Northwest Africa. If the Challenger were to lose two of its three main engines four or five minutes after launch, the flight plan calls for the astronauts to glide across the Atlantic and put down at an emergency runway at Dakar, Senegal.  
  
But they would need daylight conditions for that. So, to meet that requirement they have to lift off from Cape Canaveral no later than 2:00 p.m. In other words, the scheduled time is 1:30, and if for any reason there should be a slip of 30 minutes, they’d have to scrub the launch for the day. And now you know why.  
  
By the way, the spaceship Challenger was not supposed to fly at all. It was originally built as a test model for structural tests. And as we say, there is a cause, there is a reason for everything. NASA found out that it would be 90 to 100 million dollars cheaper to use the test model for the flight, than to built a different spacecraft from scratch. So they’re doing it to save money.  
  
And bear in mind that while it is true that all effects have causes, it is also true that some effects become causes, too.”

———

Over the Easter weekend, the smoothest countdown experienced in over twenty years of manned launches in fact had gone so smoothly that the Associate Administrator for the Office of Spaceflight, Lt. General Abrahamson, announced that “everybody was pretty bored with it.” Only two problems had occurred, “considered minor in nature” by KSC Launch Director Al O’Hara.  
  
“We did have a fine count, and we do have a fine count,” O’Hara told the assembled journalists. One problem with a Pulse Code Modulation Master Unit “is merely a bit error that we had that toggled on and off a few times, and it has not reoccurred.” He explained; “There are two PCMMUs on the orbiter, and this one that did have the toggling bit is the secondary unit. We will fly on the other one.” When the troubled PCMMU was activated on Saturday (Apr. 2), the problem did not occur during hours of testing. “So basically we put it in a category of an unexplained anomaly and we’ll do some troubleshooting after Challenger returns,” Al O’Hara said. “It is of no concern at this time, and we’re proceeding.”  
  
The second problem was an inadvertent activation of the No. 1 fuel cell on Saturday afternoon. “Starting at five or six o’clock, we did some final switch list positioning in the orbiter,” O’Hara explained. “The procedure was correct, and it was just an inadvertent throwing of the switch during the running of that switch list. The consequence was that a voltage was applied across fuel cell one; the fuel cell was not up at the time.”  
  
Al O’Hara continued, “Just to make sure that we did not have any lingering concerns, we had a telecom last evening with the vendor, with our experts at Downey and JSC. And the conclusion was, from all the people that are most familiar with the fuel cells, technical experts, that we do not have a problem and are going to press on.”  
  
Beginning at the T-10 hour mark, at about 1:10 a.m. EST on Monday morning, a fuel cell flow-through test was conducted without incident, followed three hours later by nominal fuel cell activation, which finally assured the launch team that there really was no problem.

 ————

A major concern, indeed a Major’s concern, was launch weather. “As you can tell by the weather, we really are having a happy Easter, and we’re hoping and expecting that this is going to be the case tomorrow,” General Abrahamson said during Sunday’s prelaunch briefing at Kennedy Space Center. Looking at Air Force Meteorologist Donald J. Green, who was among the officials joining him at this briefing, the General continued, “And in fact, Major Green down there, has guaranteed us that. I told him that if he doesn’t provide a good weather tomorrow for us, he’ll be Captain Green; and if he does, he might be Lt. Col. Green.”  
  
“We have a high-pressure system building into the area today; it’s going to give us a super day for the launch tomorrow,” Major Green confidently announced. “”We’ll have mostly clear skies, and good visibility. Winds will be out of the southeast around ten knots, and temperature at launch time will be in the low to mid-70s. The weather at the abort landing sites is also looking good. Edwards is forecasting mostly clear skies out there with visibilities unrestricted. Winds will be out of the northeast at Edwards about 15 knots. Dakar is looking good; they’ll have scattered cloudiness and also they’ll have easterly winds, unrestricted surface visibility. They’ll have some haze below 10,000 feet.”  
  
“The only place we’re a little bit concerned about right now is White Sands,” Green said. “They have a front and associated low-pressure system moving through that portion of the United States now. That’s giving them some strong surface winds, 30 to 35 knots; they’re getting some blowing gypsum. We expect that funnel system to be out of the area and the winds tomorrow at about 20 to 25 knots. And the visibility forecasts, from our forecasters out there, are seven miles.”  
  
“In the local area aloft, we had three balloons go up this morning, one at 7:30 and two at 9:30, showing that the winds, max winds over us right now, are about 119 knots. This is continuing to advect out of the area and our launch forecast for the upper level winds tomorrow are between 90 and 100 knots,” forecasted Major Green during the 12:30 p.m. EST press briefing. “In summary the weather at the launch site and landing sites is looking good. We’ll be under the dominance of high pressure; it’ll be hot and sunny here and a good day for launch.”  
  
Only seventeen hours before the scheduled launch the high-altitude winds were still too high to allow the launch, the jet stream at 45,000 to 47,000 feet (13.7 to 14.3 kilometers) being recorded at 122 to 166 knots (140 to 191 mph / 225 to 307 km/h). A series of five USAF weather balloons was launched to monitor wind velocity, which dropped to 94 knots (108 mph / 174 km/h) shortly before launch. The countdown thus continued.

A crowd estimated at 500,000 lined Brevard County’s beaches. The launch attracted 1,138 journalists, the smallest press attendance of any of the six shuttle launches. By comparison, 3,500 journalists covered the launch of Apollo 11. Celebrities in attendance for the STS-6 launch included singer John Denver, author George Plimpton, French astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien, Representative Don Fuqua, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, and former astronaut General Tom Stafford.

———

PAO (Hugh Harris/KSC): The countdown has been going very, very smoothly ever since it was picked up, and we are looking forward to a launch on time at 1:30 p. m. Eastern Standard Time. On the pad the ice team is in the process of taking a look at the vehicle on the zero-level of the MLP, or the Mobile Launch Platform. The team is made up of four people, who go up to the deck, or zero-level, to the 195-foot level where the orbiter access arm is, and to the 215-foot level, which is at the top of the External Tank. While they are on the Mobile Launch Platform, they will also look up into the engine area to ensure that no ice has built up on the engine gimbals or other areas. At the conclusion of their inspection they’ll return to Firing Room 2 and report to Launch Director Al O’Hara. They’re looking for ice that might build up on the External Tank because of the super cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen inside. The only danger is that that ice would shake off during launch and possibly damage the rather fragile thermal protection system, or the heat-resistant tiles on the orbiter. Also on the pad at the present time is the support crew which is preparing the white room and the crew compartment for the flight crew to enter the orbiter. At the present time they are in the process of checking the oxygen level inside the cabin. This is essential, because during the tanking of the cryogenic propellants gaseous nitrogen is flowed through much of the vehicle to ensure that there is no possibility of an accumulation of any flammable vapors. Everything going smoothly in the countdown, T-3 hours and holding, this is shuttle launch control.

———-

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-3 hours and holding; we have approximately 25 minutes remaining in this hold time. The astronaut prime crew is presently in the breakfast room and prepared for breakfast. They have been joined by a number of other astronauts at the various tables. At the head table is the Pilot Karol Bobko, sitting beside Dr. Story Musgrave… the Pilot Karol Bobko, Dr. Story Musgrave… Commander P.J. Weitz, Paul Weitz… and Mission Specialist Donald Peterson… It’s one of the more traditional breakfasts for the astronauts this morning. They have a choice… all of them have decided on orange juice… they have a choice of eggs, or cereal, or steak, or a combination of that…Joining the crew this morning for launch are some of the support astronauts… James van Hoften and Rick Hauck… Anna Fisher… Kathy Sullivan… Sally Ride, who will be on the STS-7 mission, is also present…at the other table Lt. General James Abrahamson, who is the Associate Administrator for Spaceflight at NASA headquarters and ultimately responsible for the mission…Back on the pad the closeout crew is in the process of completing their preparations in the crew compartment for the astronaut crew to come out to the pad and enter the vehicle… There is a number of tasks which must be performed in the crew compartment. One of them is taking out everything that is not needed during the mission. It’s a… although this is a four-man mission, and we will have as many as seven crewmembers on future missions, the area is not large enough to be leaving any excess material in there. The Solid Rocket Booster recovery ships are presently in the area of the proposed splashdown for the Solid Rocket Boosters. They departed from Cape Canaveral yesterday, approximately 5:00 p.m., and arrived in the recovery area about 5:00 a.m. this morning. They’re in the process of doing a sweep of the impact area which is located approximately 165 nautical miles east…Everything has been going very smoothly during this hold period, as a matter of fact during the entire countdown, a 93-hour countdown leading to lift-off of STS-6 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today. About five second away… and we’re at T-3 hours and counting. There’s just two other built-in holds in the countdown which remain: a ten-minute built-in hold which comes at the T-20 minute point, and a ten-minute built-in hold at the T-9 minute point. The countdown going very smoothly, the clock at T-2 hours 43 minutes 30 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

——-

PAO: This is shuttle launch control, T-2 hours 36 minutes 38 seconds and counting; the flight crew is just in the process of leaving the crew quarters in the O&C building and is in the elevator ready to go down to the first floor… with the exception of Story Musgrave who has just run into the elevator and been greeted by Don Peterson, the other mission specialist… John Young among the group, and they’re just about to close the door and will be on their way to the ground floor and the astrovan, which will take them to the pad…They’re on their way now out of the door of the O&C building, Commander Paul Weitz waving to the crew… entering the astrovan along with the mission specialists… Karol Bobko went over and shook hands with somebody… who wished them well on their trip. The van being close up by the security chief for this particular job… Gene String… and they’re on their way to the pad and a launch on time at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time this afternoon. This has been an exceptionally smooth countdown ever since it picked up – a 93-hour countdown, which was picked up on Wednesday afternoon and proceeded up to Saturday night at midnight; there was a 24-hour 10 minute hold over Easter Sunday, and then it was picked up at ten minutes after twelve this morning and has been proceeding smoothly ever since. The only concern has been a weather concern, and there is continuing analysis of weather balloon data which we should probably receive about the T-50 minute point. However, a management decision was made about 9 o’clock this morning that we were go for launch with the upper-level winds. Everything going smoothly, the countdown clock at T-2 hours 34 minutes and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

————

PAO: The crew has reached the white room on the orbiter access arm and are preparing for their entry into the crew compartment. The NASA Test Director has asked that the Orbiter Test Conductor conduct a check list of all of the engineers monitoring those systems and determining that there is no violation of launch commit criteria prior to allowing the astronaut crew to enter the crew compartment. Commander Paul Weitz and Karol Bobko in the process of putting on the harnesses…Dr. Story Musgrave is in the process of donning his entry… and launch helmet and preparing for his entry into the crew compartment onboard Challenger. And Don Peterson, the other Mission Specialist, will be the next to put on his helmet. The ground launch sequencer computer program has been started; that will actually be placed online at the pickup of the countdown at the T-9 minute point. The Solid Rocket Booster rate gyros have been turned on and a gaseous nitrogen purge of the Solid Rocket Booster aft skirts has begun. The rate gyros are use by the orbiter navigation systems to determine the rate of motion of the Solid Rocket Boosters during their two minutes of flight. The simulation… the simulation of the first motion of the shuttle has been sent to the Johnson Space Center range safety and firing room to test the system which indicates lift-off. This signal also starts the clock which keeps track of the mission time. Everything going smoothly in the countdown as we look forward to launch at 1:30 p.m. this afternoon… Dr. Story Musgrave making some final adjustments of the cabling which is attached to the various sensors on him, biomedical sensors which are used in the study of motion sickness in space… and he will be entering the orbiter shortly. Unlike previous flights aboard the Columbia all four of the astronauts will be able to sit on the flight deck during the launch and the reentry. The countdown clock continuing at T-1 hour 53 minutes 3 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

————

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-1 hour 40 minutes and counting. At the present time three of the four crew members have entered into the orbiter Challenger, and they’re in the process of preparing their particular area for launch. The crew entered the vehicle on time and without difficulties. Weitz took up his position in the left seat, Bobko in the right; Peterson in the center aft seat to perform launch duties as flight engineer, and Musgrave in the seat to the right, directly behind Bobko and a little behind Peterson, with no launch duties other than to enjoy the ride. And the hatch on the orbiter Challenger has just been closed. The hatch was closed by the technicians in the closeout crew in the white room after the NASA Test Director talked to Commander P.J. Weitz and asked him whether they were ready to be closed. And he gave a go for that. And so we’re proceeding along our timeline to an expected lift-off at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time this afternoon. During the last few minutes an abort advisory check was conducted. This is one of the backup systems which indicate that a major problem has been detected and the crew may have to get out quickly. This particular check involves a light which is used to signal the crew if normal voice communications have been lost. On the pad they must get open the door, get out of the orbiter, run to the slide wire baskets, and ride down the wire to the bunker or M-113 armored personnel escape vehicle. The escape vehicle is positioned at the bottom of the slide wires and the astronauts have a choice of either using that or going into the bunker. We’ve had an indication that because of the weather at White Sands that the prime Abort-Once-Around landing site will be Edwards Air Force Base in California. The weather at Edwards appears to be satisfactory, along with that at Dakar. However, at White Sands, which would normally be an Abort-Once-Around site, they have gusts of wind up to 50 miles per hour there, and they have blowing gypsum and visibility of about one half mile. Here at the Kennedy Space Center we have beautiful conditions on the ground for launch, expecting a temperature of about 75 degrees and winds gusting up to about 15 knots. Everything going smoothly, we’re standing by for the final word from the last weather balloon. But as of now we’re go. With the countdown clock at T-1 hour 13 minutes 40 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

————

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-1 hour 5 minutes and counting. The hatch on the orbiter has been closed now and the seals checked and the latches checked. And the crew up there should be in the process now of installing the insulation plugs in the insulation. The thermal insulation in that particular area is approximately an inch thick and the various attach points for the door must be covered to ensure that heat does not penetrate during the ascent and decent phase, primarily the descent phase. And so there are plugs which are made of insulating material, which also have threads so they may be screwed into the points on the door where those are necessary. One of the next steps will be a pressurization test of the crew compartment and a cabin leak check. We’re getting ready to ask the Commander Paul Weitz to support that.  
  
Out in the SRB recovery area, approximately 165 nautical miles east, the recovery ships reported earlier that there was a fishing vessel in the area which would have been out of the area by now. And they’re in the process now of contacting a freighter and advising it to move north of the coordinate, where it will be safe. This is not expected to be any problem as far as the launch is concerned. The convoy, which would support the shuttle orbiter should it have to return to the landing facility at the Kennedy Space Center is presently being positioned to support such a contingency. The convoy is made up of a number of vehicles, including a purge truck which flows air through the vehicle to ensure that there is no build-up of toxic gasses; a cooling vehicle which provides coolant for the electronic and other system onboard the orbiter; a special white room and stair truck used for astronauts to exit the vehicle; the crews are supported by SCAPE-suited personnel, who would monitor the vehicle after landing to ensure that no toxic propellants were escaping to endanger the landing support crews. SCAPE simply means that there’s self-contained air breathing apparatus.  
  
Everything going very smoothly in the countdown, weather has been a concern, and we’re waiting for a final weather go which should come at about the T-50 minute point in the countdown. But at the present time we have a go from the mission team and expect that that is going to stay the same. We have had to shift the once-around abort site from White Sands, New Mexico, to California because of the weather conditions at White Sands, where we have blowing gypsum and visibility of about one half mile. Everything proceeding on time looking for a launch at 1:30 p.m. this afternoon of STS-6, the first flight of the orbiter Challenger… the countdown clock at T-1 hour 1 minute 25 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

—————

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-55 minutes and counting. We’ve just completed the L-80 minute weather briefing and… Launch Director Al O’Hara has indicated that we are go for launch at this time. Everything has been going very smoothly in the countdown; at the present time the crew are getting reading for a cabin pressure check, or leak check.  
  
The preflight calibration of the Inertial Measurement Units has been completed and we have now started the preflight alignment of the Inertial Measurement Units. These units are used to tell the guidance systems on the orbiter where they are in relationship to the launch pad here at the Kennedy Space Center. The three IMUs are calibrated during the early part of the terminal countdown and then aligned for lift-off because the Earth’s rotation puts errors into the system. The IMUs must be put online as part of the navigation system within about ten minutes of completing alignment. Once they are free to measure acceleration and attitude changes, the vehicle must be launched within 200 minutes, or the alignment process must be repeated. In orbit, the Inertial Measurement Units must be realigned periodically, and this is done with the star tracker which is mounted on the structure containing the IMUs. The astronauts make use of two out of 50 stars located about 90 degrees apart… Just a short time ago the launch countdown clock was adjusted with the correct Greenwich Mean Time, because time is a vital part of the navigational system as well. The countdown clock at T-53 minutes 8 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

————

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-45 minutes and counting. The S-band telemetry system has been switched to high power and configured to change to transmit and receive signals by radio rather than through wires as is done during most of the countdown. The ground launch sequencer main line computer programs are activated and are being monitored to prepare to take over the countdown at the T-9 minute point.  
  
The first crew module pressurization and leak check is complete. During the past few minutes the range safety officer verified that the range safety system is ready for launch and is conducting an open loop network verification test. The flight crew has configured the switch panel and activated the hydraulic auxiliary power units’ water boilers. These are used for cooling of the turbine system which produces the hydraulic power used to steer the engine on the solid rocket motors. The countdown going very smoothly; T-43 minutes 55 seconds and counting; this is shuttle launch control.

————

PAO: The white room, which is used for entrance by the crew into the orbiter has now been completely reconfigured for launch and is in the stage where it may be swung back from the orbiter, which occurs at the T-7 minute point in the countdown. Everything in this countdown has been moving along right on schedule or slightly ahead of schedule. We’ve just passed the point where one of the opportunities for Houston to update the computers. During the countdown the five onboard computers are updated, or loaded, several times; at the 19-and-a-half-hour point the four primary computers all receive the final load from the mass memory unit in the orbiter, and then all four are run together and the information in them compared to ensure that they all understand the same things. This is important since they act as a committee in flight and vote among themselves as to whether they are directing the flight to do the proper things. At T-45 minutes, Johnson Space Center had the possibility of sending new information to update them, based on any unusual weather conditions the vehicle might fly through. At T-20 minutes another chance occurs to update the computers if necessary. And one of the four computers is read out and compared with what should be identical programs contained in the Firing Room data processing system console. At T-18 minutes, additional opportunity occurs to input any changes. At T-9 minutes, the countdown begins to be controlled by the ground launch sequencer. During this period the ground launch sequencer sends commands to the onboard flight computers, which then report back when their tasks have been completed. At T-28 seconds the system is reversed and the onboard computers take over the final seconds of the countdown; and the ground launch sequencer simply monitors what they have been doing. However, it does have to send a command ordering the start of the three main engines. Everything going smoothly, the countdown at T-37 minutes 45 second and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

———-

PAO: We’re just a little less than a minute and a half away from one of our two built-in holds remaining in the countdown this afternoon. The primary computer program is presently transferred to the backup computer in the orbiter to ensure that both systems have the same information. In case of the prime computer failing during flight, the backup would take over control of the shuttle vehicle. The Orbiter Test Conductor has asked Commander Paul Weitz to close the cabin vent valves once again, and we’re just about 50 seconds away now from a ten-minute built-in hold. This ten-minute built-in hold is a period during which all the computers in the Firing Room, or the control room, are configured with the proper programs for the final portion of the countdown. At the time we come out of the hold, the onboard computer will be changed over to the flight program. Also during this hold, the inertial measurement preflight alignment will be complete; the inertial measurement being a part of the navigation system which is absolutely essential during flight. The countdown at T-20 minutes 13 seconds and counting, coming up on that built-in hold… just about six seconds away from it… 2… 1… T-20 minutes and holding… This is a ten-minute built-in hold; there will be one additional ten-minute built-in hold which comes at the T-9 minute point. Everything is going very smoothly in the countdown since we picked it up on Wednesday afternoon. It was a 93-hour count; we had one major built-in hold. That occurred from midnight on Saturday until ten minutes after twelve early this morning. And then we’ve been going down; we’ve had another hold at the T-3 hour point, and then picked it up and are proceeding now towards launch. We were very concerned with the upper-level winds here at the Kennedy Space Center, starting last night. However, the winds have abated and we are in a go position at this time. The countdown at T-20 minutes and holding, this is shuttle launch control.

———-

PAO: The computer transition to Ops 101 has just been made; Ops 101 is the computer program used for the ascent of the Space Shuttle into orbit. As we come out of the hold the prime computer is dumped and compared with the onboard computer to verify that it has the proper configuration for launch. At this time, a purge of the three fuel cells onboard the orbiter is also underway. During this period the flight crew will be configuring their computer for comparison tests; they’ve also been checking the horizontal situation displays. The crew is configuring their instruments for launch. At T-16 minutes the main propulsion subsystem cockpit switches will be configured and the helium tank isolation valves opened for launch. The countdown clock at T-19 minutes and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

———

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-16 minutes and counting; everything going smoothly as we count now down to the T-9 minute point where we will pause once again for a ten-minute built-in hold. The STS-6 flight is a flight having many firsts: It’s  the first launch of the shuttle orbiter Challenger; it’s the first time we’ve used the light-weight External Tank; the first time that we’ve used the light-weight Solid Rocket Boosters.  But on this mission of firsts the three Getaway Specials also can claim some firsts: The one from the Park Seed Company of Greenwood, South Carolina, can lay claim to a number of them. This Getaway Special… the Getaway Special program allows companies, universities and private individuals to send scientific experiments into space aboard the Space Shuttle for prices ranging from about three to ten thousand dollars. The Park Seed Company is taking advantage of the program to fly the first flower and vegetable seeds into space and also become the first company to use this program for a commercial or industrial application. Although the experiment occupies a small container, it has some broad scientific objectives: learning to package seeds to survive the rigors of space travel and be used to provide food on manned orbiting space stations of the future is one such application. However, a much broader and vital objective will be allowing Park Seed Company scientists to learn more about the possibility of using space for storage of genetic strains which must be preserved for future generations and the possibility of using space to produce desirable mutations in seeds.  

Another Getaway Special experiment is being flown by one of the largest newspapers of Japan. Japanese who were the first to create artificial snow flakes on Earth will become the first scientists to create artificial snow in space as well. The experiment, selected from 17,000 suggestions submitted by readers of Asahi Shimbun, one of the largest newspapers in Japan with a readership of about eight million. The experiment is expected to contribute to the knowledge of crystallography, especially the crystal growth of semi-conductors and other materials from a vapor source. Semi-conductors are the building blocks of most modern electric devices. Some scientists have theorized that the crystal may form of snow in a very symmetrical way, but others expect spherical crystals to form.  
  
 The third Getaway Special is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Academy; six projects were developed in an engineering design course at the academy over the past five years. These experiments range from a demonstration of the feasibility of soldering beams in space to testing the effect of weightlessness on the development of microorganisms. Five of the experiments fall in the metallurgy area, with the study of the uniformity of metal alloys manufactured in zero-g, the formation of metallic sponge, electroplating and metal purification. The countdown continuing smoothly, the clock at T-12 minutes 30 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control.

———-

PAO: This is shuttle launch control at T-10 minutes 30 seconds and counting. The chase plane pilots have been ordered to start their engines and other airports in the area have been informed that the radio frequency used by the chase planes will be active through launch and asked to keep that channel clear of other traffic. The NASA test conductor has asked safety and security to verify that all non-essential personnel have cleared the launch danger area, and has been assured that the closeout crews have cleared the road blocks. The purge of fuel cells used to generate electricity onboard the orbiter has been completed. The booster test conductor has started the flow of gaseous nitrogen purge of the aft skirts of the Solid Rocket Boosters. This flow of inert gas ensures that no explosive of flammable gases can accumulate in the bottom of the solid motors prior to the ignition. The countdown clock just about 35 seconds away from the final ten-minute built-in hold in our count… The flight crew has closed the vent valve on the crew cabin and cabin pressure has been verified. The comparison of the prime computer with the onboard computer has been completed, and that is satisfactory. All aerosurfaces and actuators on the orbiter are presently in the proper configuration for the Auxiliary Power Units to start and hydraulic pressure to be applied… five seconds away from our hold… T-9 minutes and holding… this is a ten-minute built-in hold…The STS-6 mission is a mission of many firsts. It’s the first flight of the Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger, the first flight of the light-weight External Tank, which carries the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the main engines on the orbiter… Altogether, the weight savings are significant, increasing the cargo carrying capability… 20,000 pounds altogether has been saved compared with the last launch of the Columbia orbiter… This is also the first use of the higher-thrust main engines on the orbiter; they will be operating at 104 percent, rather that 100 percent of rate of thrust… Another first scheduled for this flight will be the exiting of the crew compartment by Mission Specialists Dr. Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson, to spend three and a half hours moving about the cargo bay in the cold vacuum of space… At this time Launch Director Al O’Hara speaking to the launch crew… Launch Director Al O’Hara has wished God’s blessing to the crew for a good launch and a good mission, and the crew has been thanked by the commander for the STS crew, and also by Karol Bobko, who’s considered sort of an honorary KSC member because of the many months he spent here at the Kennedy Space Center as a support astronaut prior to the first shuttle mission… Everything moving along… the countdown clock at T-9 minutes and holding… This is shuttle launch control.

———-

PAO: This is shuttle launch control, T-9 minutes and holding… approximately five minutes remaining in this period; everything appears to be satisfactory as we proceed through the count, the NASA Test Director is conducting a status check to ensure that we are ready to resume the count and go for launch… Following ignition of the solid motors in lift-off the vehicle will take approximately seven seconds to clear the tower; at that point the shuttle’s velocity will be greater than 100 feet per second, and increases… When the velocity reaches 121 feet per second, the vehicle will begin to pitch over followed by a roll maneuver to align it properly with the flight azimuth; at 53 seconds into the flight, the vehicle will encounter the greatest structural loads on it. And the crew will reduce the main engine thrusts to keep the dynamic pressure below 58 pound per square foot… This is a major mission for both NASA and the commercial community. The first flight of the orbiter Challenger is also carrying the first  of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. This is the first of three identical spacecraft planned to replace Earth-bound tracking stations, built by TRW for SPACECOM, a company owned jointly by Western Union and the American Satellite Company. The TDRS satellite will be leased by NASA for a period of ten years. Whereas the present ground tracking stations can provide coverage of low-Earth-orbiting satellites and the Space Shuttle about 20 percent of the time, the TDRS network will provide virtually 100 percent coverage… The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite is the largest and most advanced communications satellite ever launched; shaped something like a four-armed spider, it weighs 4,668 pounds in orbit. The solar panels on two of those four legs measure 57 feet from tip to tip and the antenna legs on the opposite direction measure 42 feet across the antennas. Extending outwrd from the spacecraft body are arms which hold two 16-foot diameter antennas. These reflector-type antennas weigh only a few pounds despite their size and they are woven out of a metal called molybdenum and plated with a very thin layer of gold to provide the electrical and thermal characteristics. This molybdenum mesh was woven on the same type of machines used to make women’s’ stockings…. Just about two and a half minutes away from picking up the countdown at the T-9 minute point… We have gone through a status check and everybody has assured the launch director that we are ready to resume the count and go for launch. The countdown clock at T-9 minutes and holding, this is shuttle launch control.

———-

PAO: This is shuttle launch control, just 30 seconds away from coming out of the final built-in hold at the T-9 minute point in our countdown, looking for a lift-off on time of STS-6, the sixth flight of the Space Shuttle and the first flight of the orbiter Challenger at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The countdown clock about five seconds away from picking up the count… We are holding the clock at the T-9 minute point while we check on the… on the booster system… The NASA Test Director is in the process of checking with the booster test conductor to determine whether or not there is a problem… Okay, we have gotten the go to pick up the clock, and we will pick up in ten seconds at the T-9 minute point… approximately five seconds… 3… 2… 1… T-9 minutes and counting.

———-

PAO: The launch events are now being controlled by the ground launch sequencer from now up to T-25 seconds when they switch to the onboard redundant set launch sequencer. The ground launch sequencer is part of the launch processing system and operates by relaying commands to the orbiter’s onboard computers which then report back to the launch processing system when the commands have been executed. The primary job of the computers is to check that all of the launch commit criteria, such as propellant loads, temperatures, pressures, and other measurements are proper. The launch and recovery director has ordered the chase planes to take off… Coming up on the 8 minute point in the countdown… T-8 minutes and counting; everything proceeding smoothly towards an on time lift-off at 1:30… The liquid oxygen fill and drain valve in the External Tank has been closed and topping of the tank completed. Liquid oxygen drainback has been started. This means that liquid oxygen is flowing through the main propulsion system and back to the large storage tank to cool the system down slowly to 270 degrees below zero, so they will not be shocked by the torrent of super cold fluid. T-7 minutes 27 seconds and counting.

———

PAO: At the T-7 minute point the crew access arm will retract and is in the process of retracting right now. This is the walkway used by the astronauts to get from the service structure to the orbiter. If an emergency should arise, that arm can be put back in position within fifteen seconds. T-7 minutes and counting; like other things in the countdown today, we have been just slightly ahead of schedule as we go down towards a lift-off…T-6 minutes 30 seconds and counting… at the 6 minute point, the crew will perform the Auxiliary Power Unit prestart, which consists of positioning a number of switches and verifying that they are in the proper position, then throwing the three propellant isolation valve switches which allow the hydrazine fuel to start flowing from the tanks toward the APU’s… coming up on the 6 minute point… T-6 minutes and counting; the pilot Karol Bobko has been asked to perform the APU prestart… T-5 minutes 40 seconds and counting; the flight recorders are on. The flight recorders provide measurements of the shuttle system performance during the entire mission for a playback after landing. T-5 minutes 25 seconds and counting; everything going smoothly towards lift-off… and we have a go for APU start; coming up on the five-minute point… T-5 minutes and counting; we have a go for APU start… APU start is in work...The APUs, or Auxiliary Power Units, provide hydraulic power to move the aerosurfaces and main engines for steering. The astronauts have closed their visors... T-4 minutes 30 seconds and counting… The firing circuit for the Solid Rocket Booster ignition and range safety destruct devices has been armed by a ground launch sequencer command; this is accomplished by a motor-driven switch called an arm and safe device. The system is the inhibited to prevent premature ignition... T-4 minutes 5 seconds and counting... The main fuel valve heaters have been turned off in preparation for engine start…The main engines on the orbiter will actually be started at the T-6.8 second point. It takes three seconds for them to reach 90 percent thrust, at which time the solid motor ignition sequence starts. T-3 minutes 40 seconds and counting… The elevons, speed brake and rudders are now being moved through a preprogrammed pattern to ensure that they are capable of doing their jobs during flight. T-3 minutes 27 seconds and counting… The shuttle is now on internal power; however, the fuel cells are still receiving some fuels from ground support equipment for another minute. T-3 minutes 13 seconds and counting; the profile check of the aerosurfaces is complete and verified, and the aerosurfaces are in launch position. Coming up on the three-minute point… T-3 minutes and counting; the engine gimbal or movement check of the main engines is underway. The liquid oxygen valve for filling the External Tank is closed and pressurization has begun… T-2 minutes 45 seconds…The gaseous oxygen vent arm is being retracted… T-2 minutes 30 seconds and counting; the fuel cells’ ground supply of liquid oxygen and hydrogen has been terminated and the vehicle now on its onboard supply. The beanie cap, or gaseous oxygen vent arm, carries away vapors from the oxygen tank while the tank is full on the pad. Coming up on the two-minute point in our countdown; the main engines have been moved to their start position and the astronauts have cleared the caution and warning memories...T-1 minute 56 seconds, and the liquid hydrogen vent valve has been closed; flight pressurization is underway. T-1 minute 45 seconds; at this point the computer automatically verifies the readiness of the main engines… T-1 minute 30 seconds and counting; the liquid hydrogen tank is now reaching flight pressure in approximately five seconds from now. T-1 minute 20 seconds and counting… the liquid hydrogen tank is at flight pressure. Coming up on the one-minute point in our countdown…T-1 minute and counting; the firing system for the sound suppression water system is armed. T-55 seconds and the hydrogen igniters under the orbiter’s engines have been armed. These devices are used to ensure any hydrogen flowing through the engines prior to engine ignition does not accumulate… T-40 seconds and counting; we are just seconds away from switching command of the countdown to the onboard computers…T-30 seconds and counting; we are go for auto sequence start. The Hydraulic Power Units on the SRBs have started… T-20 seconds and counting…We are go for main engine ignition… 7… 6… we have main engine ignition… 4… 3… 2… 1… zero, and lift-off. Lift-off of the orbiter Challenger and the sixth flight of the Space Shuttle; the shuttle has cleared the tower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	18. STS-6:ascent

Weitz: Challenger is on the way and we’ve got roll program.  
  
CapCom (Dick Covey): Houston copies, Challenger.

Jay Barbree: There’s ignition of Challenger’s main engines and its launch pad is now covered with a cloud of fire and steam; all three engines appear to be burning well and Challenger is off. It’s a beautiful sight; Challenger is going straight up on its maiden flight, right on time. You can hear the roar coming toward us now… here comes the roar of the engines as they begin to arc overhead moving across the Atlantic. A beautiful launch right through a cloudless sky…  
  
PAO (Jack Riley/JSC): …the period of maximum aerodynamic pressure… 30 seconds elapsed… throttles in all three main engines coming down to 81 percent… velocity 2,000 feet per second, altitude three and a half miles, downrange two miles… One minute elapsed…  
  
Barbree: So far, so good – Challenger still climbing straight up; it’s out over the Atlantic Ocean right now on a beautiful flight path. Everything going smooth and you can hear the roar begin to fade out over the ocean. In the background you can hear the astronauts themselves and Mission Control… still going beautifully, everything right on time…

PAO: Main engine throttles going back to 104 percent, Challenger is go at throttle up…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, you are go at throttle up.  
  
Weitz: Roger, go at throttle up.  
  
Barbree: Everything is go; that’s the voice of Jack Riley in Mission Control. Everything is right on schedule, Steve.  
  
Porter: Jay Barbree at the Cape, and this is NBC News coverage of the flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger.  
  
PAO: Trajectory slightly depressed; no problem, flight dynamics officer reports…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we see you’re slightly depressed; no problem.  
  
Weitz: Okay, Dick.  
  
Reid Collins (CBS News/KSC): … (Having waited) two and a half months for this you might be slightly depressed…  
  
PAO: Velocity 4,100 feet per second, altitude 15 miles, downrange 14 miles…

Collins: She’s still clear as a bell, as if she were a gull that you just saw take off here… in one of the clearest skies we’ve ever seen at the Cape.  
  
PAO: Velocity 5,100 feet per second, 20 miles in altitude, downrange 22 nautical miles.  
  
Weitz: Pc less than fifty.  
  
PAO: Standing by for Solid Rocket Booster separation…  
  
Collins: Standing by for sep…  
  
Weitz: SRB sep and was _that_ something.  
  
Collins: They say that…  
  
Weitz: We have an awful lot of soot on the windows at SRB sep, Dick.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we copy that.  
  
Collins: A lot of the material on the window, I believe he said…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, your first stage performance was nominal.  
  
Weitz: Okay, thank you.  
  
Collins: She’s flying alone on the mains now.

PAO: Guidance has converged; velocity now 6,000 feet per second, altitude 31 miles, Challenger is 46 miles downrange…  
  
Collins: With the naked eye we can see it still…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, you have two-engine TAL capability.  
  
Weitz: Two-engine TAL.  
  
PAO: Challenger now capable of a trans-Atlantic abort to Dakar Airport on Africa’s west coast if one main engine fails.  
  
Collins: Still a dot in the sky; still visible to the naked eye. Not an eye here at the Cape has lost sight......  
  
PAO: Three minutes elapsed time; velocity 6,800 feet per second, altitude 39 miles, Challenger is 70 miles downrange…  
  
Collins: We’re a little more than three minutes into the flight.

PAO: All three main engines still at 104 percent; Challenger is go at three minutes 15 seconds… Flight Director Jay Greene taking a status check at all positions prior to Challenger reaching negative return point…  
  
Collins: In about 15 seconds from now she can’t come back here; she’d have to get to Africa… but nothing to indicate…  
  
 PAO: Velocity 7,800 feet per second…  
  
Collins: Nothing to indicate there’s anything wrong.  
  
PAO: 47 miles altitude…  
  
Collins: Reaching over…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, you’re negative return.  
  
Weitz: Roger, negative return.  
  
PAO: Challenger no longer able to return to the Kennedy Space Center.  
  
Collins: The next stop…  
  
PAO: Challenger is 127 miles downrange, at an altitude of 50 nautical miles, velocity 8,700 feet per second.  
  
Collins: Next stop would have to be Dakar in Senegal, in Western Africa… There’s a little 11,000-foot strip there... and a few NASA people, too… with a couple of medical kits…  
  
PAO: Four minutes 25 seconds elapsed; velocity 95-hundred feet per second, altitude is 53 and a half miles, 165 miles downrange… Challenger is still go all systems, all three main engines still at 104 percent…  
  
Collins: The engines have left no doubt…  
  
PAO: Velocity 10,400 feet per second, altitude 55 miles, downrange 196 nautical miles…  
  
Collins: …they’re doing their work… modified, changed…  
  
PAO: Standing by for press to MECO.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, press to MECO.  
  
Weitz: Press to MECO and normal throttles.  
  
PAO: That press to Main Engine Cut-Off call tells spacecraft Commander Paul Weitz that Challenger can now continue uphill if one main engine fails.  
  
Collins: They’d go on the MECO, or Main Engine Cut-Off point; nothing is going wrong. The best thing would be to get into some form of orbit. It doesn’t really matter what…

PAO: Flight Director Jay Greene polling all positions, all controllers reporting everything looks great; five minutes 40 seconds…  
  
Collins: Back here at the Cape a mushroom cloud of that white smoke…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, you have single-engine TAL capability.  
  
Weitz: Single-engine TAL.  
  
PAO: Challenger now capable of reaching Dakar Airport if two main engines fail. Velocity 13,900 feet per second, altitude is 58 nautical miles, downrange 321 nautical miles...  
  
Collins: The column of white is perturbed up there, and that wind may be…  
  
PAO: Time for Main Engine Cut-Off computed for eight minutes 20 seconds…  
  
Collins: A couple of minutes more to ride. But you can see clearly here, …  
  
PAO: Velocity 15,000 feet per second, altitude is 58 nautical miles, downrange 364 nautical miles...  
  
Collins: … as she speeds on, that she did go through some perturbation of the atmosphere there…  
  
PAO: Six and a half minutes elapsed time…  
  
Collins: The ships 200 miles out there beginning to look for the solid rockets coming down on their parachutes. They had to chase a couple of vessels out of that impact area.  
  
PAO: Velocity up to 17,000 feet per second, still at 58 nautical miles, Challenger 433 nautical miles downrange…  
  
Collins: As the voice of Jack Riley tells us where she is, we no longer can see her.  
  
PAO: Seven minutes elapsed time…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, you’re single-engine press to MECO.  
  
Weitz: Single-engine press. Thank you.  
  
PAO: That call tells the crew to press on even if two main engines shut down early.  
  
Collins: All of the ifs…  
  
PAO: Challenger’s velocity nearing 20,000 feet per second,…  
  
Collins: Only 5,000 feet per second she’ll have to gain…  
  
PAO: 529 miles downrange, at an altitude of 58.1 nautical miles… Main Engine Cut-Off still computed for eight minutes 24 seconds.  
  
Collins: A ribbon of smoke over Launch Pad 39A; the damage assessment teams will be at the pad shortly.

PAO: 23,000 feet per second, altitude 58 and a half miles, downrange 629 nautical miles… eight minutes…  
  
Weitz: (garble) master alarm cabin atmosphere light, Houston.  
  
CapCom: We copy.  
   
PAO: Cabin atmosphere master alarm…  
  
Collins: These things sometimes…  
  
PAO: 25,000 feet per second…  
  
Weitz: MECO. We’ve got a MECO.  
  
Collins: Main Engine Cut-Off.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we copy, and no problem with your cabin atmosphere.  
  
Collins: As I say that happens sometimes and the alarms go off, but they don’t really mean anything.  
  
PAO: Nominal MECO.

Collins: In a few minutes they’ll separate from the tank…  
  
Weitz: (garble), Houston.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Collins: …a few seconds…  
  
PAO: Houston confirms External Tank separation.  
  
Collins: And now a couple of more burns with the OMS systems and they’ll be in the orbit that they’re looking for – 176 miles around the Earth. Yet tonight much work to be done, however, because they must launch that Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. They must do many other things before they sleep. They have waited two and a half months for these nine minutes ten seconds, however, and they probably won’t be ready to sleep even when the big job comes later tonight. So we have seen the successful maiden launch of the second space vehicle this country has managed to build – the Challenger.  Challenger is meeting the challenge set by Columbia, on this the voyage of shuttle six. For Judy Muller in Houston, Texas, this is Reid Collins, CBS News, at the Kennedy Space Center.     
  
Weitz: We don’t have 104 yet, Houston.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we copy… Challenger, we need for you to switch aft bay one fan.  
  
Weitz: Okay, how about the ops 104, Dick?  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, recommend manual pro to ops 104.  
  
PAO: OMS-1 will be 223 feet per second, burn time two minutes 26 seconds… looking for an orbit of 153 by 50 nautical miles.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, you have a go for nominal OMS-1, APU shutdown on time.  
  
Weitz: Wilco, Houston.  
  
PAO: Ignition both engines… good OMS burn… we are 30 seconds away from Loss of Signal through Bermuda… OMS burn continuing in good shape…  
  
CapCom Challenger, Houston, we’re 20 seconds to LOS. We see a good burn in progress, configure LOS; we’ll talk with you at Dakar at 17:52.  
  
Weitz: Wilco.

Tom Brokaw: We did have confirmation of OMS-1, and by now I think we’ve lost the signal as they go out over Bermuda. And what will happen in the future as a result of that new satellite up there, we won’t lose the signal nearly as often.  
  
Gordon Fullerton: That’s right. We’re going to be in nearly continuous coverage with Mission Control, and we’ll not have to go from site to site to site, getting only about twenty percent coverage, as we do now.  
  
Tom Brokaw: That means that those controllers down at the ground can bug you guys on the air 24 hours…  
  
Gordon Fullerton: There’s some talk about whether that’s all good news or not…

———-

FAIR WINDS – WET LAKEBED  
  
“The big problem we were worried about was the structural loading due to the winds that were around in the launch area,” Flight Director Jay Greene reminded journalists at the Mission Control change-of-shift briefing at 4:17 p.m. CST. “We had a very fortunate occurrence in that the winds cooperated perfectly. We had virtually no load exceedences; we had no problems from the load point of view, and the decision was made to launch.”  
  
Greene continued, “We had one trade that we had to make. As you know, we would have liked for our AOA site to have used the lakebed landing if we had to perform an AOA. The lakebed was nominally chosen to be Northrup Strip in that Edwards’ lakebed is no longer a lakebed – it’s a lake. Northrup, when last I heard, had gusts somewhere in excess of 25 knots and light snow; so we opted to go with Edwards. The Edwards weather was acceptable and during the precount we passed the word to the crew that Edwards 04, the concrete runway out there, was our nominal selection if we had to do an AOA.”  
  
  
JUST EIGHT ONE-HUNDREDTH OF A SECOND LATE  
  
Just 0.0884 seconds after her planned launch time of 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on April 4, 1983, Challenger lifted off after spending 126 days on the pad to begin her historic first mission, with the three engines rated at 100 percent thrust and the SRBs burning nominally. As the vehicle cleared the launch tower, the engines were throttled up to 104 percent thrust some 6.5 seconds into the flight. Launch Director Al O'Hara said instruments detected no fuel leaks at all in Challenger's engine compartment during launch.  
  
As the Challenger climbed into a clear blue sky, she rolled 90 degrees to a 090 degree heading out over the Atlantic Ocean, taking her into her planned 28.5 degree orbital inclination. “Challenger is on the way and we’ve got roll program.” – No sooner had Paul Weitz’ voice echoed from the public address system than the first pounding, howling shockwaves of sound, rocked the very ground itself as the hot, humid Florida air became a wall of deafening thunder. Because Challenger's engines were four percent more powerful than Columbia's, the rumble and roar shook the ground more than any previous flight. A column of smoke from the SRBs and main engines was visible for forty miles around.  
  
The changes incorporated in the vehicle and engines resulted in a slight change of launch velocity and altitude timings compared with previous flights. A the vehicle approached Max-Q, the engines were throttled down to 81 percent thrust at MET 30.6 seconds, the vehicle passing through Max-Q at just over 70 seconds into the flight and encountering dynamic pressure much less than that of the test flights before it. This was a reflection of flying an operational rather than a data-gathering ascent. As the mission duration clock passed the Max-Q point, the engines were again throttled up to 104 percent.  
  
Shortly afterwards Mission Control in Houston reported Challenger taking a slightly lower trajectory than planned; the problem was considered insignificant, and the shuttle adjusted course while continuing its upward trajectory. The separation of the SRBs occurred some 3,000 feet (915 meters) lower than the planned 153,100 feet (46,665 meters) level, a result of the depressed trajectory, at MET 2 minutes 9 seconds and in full view of the crowds watching from the Cape.  
  
Challenger, flying at Mach 4.4, was following a path angle one degree lower than planned, but this was not considered a safety issue. As the SRBs separated a layer of soot was deposited on the orbiter’s windows, much to the annoyance of the crew, but posing no hazard to their viewing capabilities. Despite the lower trajectory, first-stage performance was given as nominal, vehicle reserves making up the deficit. The SRBs splashed down in the Atlantic about seven minutes after launch, within 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) of each other at a point some 188 miles (303 kilometers) due east of the Cape. NASA reported the boosters were located quickly and USBI's recovery ships retrieved them at about 2:15 p.m. EST.  
  
Challenger's two 93-ton SRBs were returned to a Cape Canaveral Air Force Station hangar and USBI reported that they would be used again in early and mid-1984. "They are in excellent shape. It was a model recovery," said Paul Burton, USBI spokesman.  
  
The launch of Space Shuttle Mission Six marked the first reuse of Morton Thiokol solid rocket motor hardware flown on earlier shuttle flights, a cost-saving program goal. Booster hardware added to the motors by United Space Boosters, Inc. to complete the power plants also was reflown for the first time during the Space Shuttle program. The reuse of several tons of previously flown booster hardware saved over a million dollars in STS-6 launch costs, according to Thiokol.  
  
Parts of the rockets were used during STS-1 in April, 1981, and the parachutes were used in November, 1981, for STS-2. Additional minor components that had been part of earlier ground test motor firings at Thiokol in Utah also were flown on the STS-6 boosters. This hardware came primarily from the first and second qualification motor firings that occurred in June and September, 1979, respectively. Similar ground test hardware also had flown some previous missions.

AN EASY RIDE INTO ORBIT  
  
Main Engine Cut-Off was achieved at eight minutes 20 seconds into the flight, some two seconds later than planned, at a height of 65.6 miles (105.6 kilometers), but travelling one foot (0.305 meters) per second faster than predicted. The improved engines had allowed a MECO to be achieved some 20 seconds earlier than on the five previous Columbia missions, despite the heavier payload.  
  
Separation of the ET was achieved as planned, but the separation maneuver took about a half minute longer than envisaged because of the reduced engine impulse, and the overspeed situation reduced the burn velocity of the first OMS maneuver by seven feet (2.13 meters) per second. As Challenger climbed to orbit, the ET fell back towards Earth, reentering the atmosphere and burning up as planned and its debris falling into the Indian Ocean.  
  
The OMS-1 burn was initiated at MET 10 minutes 19 seconds, increasing velocity by 218 feet (66.4 meters) per second. Shutdown of the three APUs at MET 13 minutes 43 seconds was followed by the OMS-2 burn at MET 43 minutes 38 seconds. This lasted one minute 57 seconds, resulting in a velocity increase of 185.8 feet (56.6 meters) per second. By the 45th minute of the mission, Challenger was safely in her operational 185 mile (298 kilometer) circular orbit, inclined at 28.5 degrees to the Equator with an orbital period of one hour 30 minutes 22 seconds.  
  
According to the crew the launch was very smooth, with no unexpected events; in fact it was a much easier ride than that of the simulations during training. In his March 2000 interview for the JSC Oral History Project STS-6 Commander Paul Weitz compared the launch of Challenger with his earlier experience riding the Saturn I-B into Earth orbit:  
  
“The value of our simulators ends when those engines light and you lift off, see, because, I mean, they try to fake you out a little bit by tipping the shuttle orbiter simulator and that, but it doesn't compare with three shuttle main engines and two solids going. As I tell people, I said, _‘You know you're on your way and you're going somewhere and you hope they keep pointed in the right direction, because it's an awesome feeling.’_ But you don't get as many Gs. I think we got up to about four and a half Gs on ascent, on the Saturn I, where the orbiter throttles back to maintain no more than three Gs.”  
   
“Now, the things that are different is the thrust in the Saturn was actual – in other words, it was straight ahead, so you're being pressed directly into your couch, where in the orbiter, you know, the orbiter's sitting on top of the ET, the solid rocket's around the side, so that effectively what you're doing is now these engines, the shuttle main engines are thrusting this way, which wants to push to the stack over this way. So really, when the orbiter is going up on ascent it's flying this way. So besides the eyeballs-in stuff, you get some eyeballs up. It was more marked than I had been led to expect, even though you talked to other crews, so you really are pressed up against your shoulder straps on ascent. It wasn't particularly uncomfortable or disconcerting, it just was, you'd have rather not had that, because it's unnatural in an airplane or any flying machine to have you going up that way.”  
  
“There were more Gs. They had a thing in the center, one, I think was a second stage, called PU shift, Propellant Utilization. The onboard computer takes a look at how much of each of the propellants is remaining and then does a mixture shift. Well, they said there'd be a slight decay in thrust. Hell, I thought the engines – heck, excuse me – I thought the engines had quit on that. I mean, the drop in thrust was significant to this new guy as we were going uphill there. But everything else, staging went well, and the same thing, the usual with the shuttle, when the solids separate, you get this big blast from the separation motors on the solids and it puts gunk all over the windshield. We haven't still solved that part.”  
  
  
READY FOR THE NEXT ONE  
  
Following the launch, an inspection of Launch Pad 39A revealed comparatively little damage from the lift-off of STS-6, whose repair would pose no problem to the planned launch date of STS-7 in early June. KSC officials credited an ongoing program to "harden" the concrete and steel structure. Sgt. Wayne Ranow, a U.S. Air Force launch pad operations manager, said only about ten electrical boxes had been damaged compared to a high of 25 on earlier launches.  
  
Ranow also said none of the four-inch thick bricks that pave the pad were shattered by the rocket thrust. During the first two launches as many as 100 such bricks were hurled 1,500 feet  (457 meters) into fences. After STS-2, a solid coat of concrete was poured over the area directly under the rocket flame to keep the bricks in place.


	19. STS-6:flight day 1

**Monday, April 4, 1983 (Flight Day 1) – And We’re All Proud of You**  
  
_“Story and I were responsible for launching TDRS, and Story’s the kind of guy that he wants to throw the switches. So what I did was took the checklist and made sure – Story was not real good about following the checklist, and so you had to kind of say, ‘Wait, Story. Let’s go step by step here and make sure we get this right.’  
  
The scary part of that, and I don’t know – this was a long time ago and my memory may not be correct. But we were in quarantine. We were in the crew quarters at the Cape, and, I don’t know, a couple or three nights before we were supposed to launch, these two guys showed up and they were from Boeing, or said they were from Boeing. They had badges. They said, ‘We need to talk to you.’ They said, ‘It turns out the load, the software that you trained on in the simulator is not exactly the same as the software that’s flying, and a lot of the codes are different. We need to give you the new codes.’  
  
Story and I literally copied a bunch of stuff down with pen and ink and used that on orbit. And that’s really scary, because, you know, you’re taking these guys’ words. You’ve never seen some of this stuff in the simulator. It’s like, suppose what they’re telling us is not right, and we do something and we mess up the payload. Then they ain’t never going to find those two guys again. They’ll be gone, and it’ll be, like, ‘Why the hell didn’t you guys do it the way you were trained to do it?’ And we really didn’t have time to coordinate it.  
  
I think Story called somebody at Houston, and they said, ‘Yeah, we think there were some...’ You know. But it was pretty vague. That kind of stuff, that bothers you a lot, because those payloads are extremely expensive, and that was a very important thing to get on orbit and have it work properly. And even then, the engines didn’t work right. They almost lost it. That didn’t affect us because it was already deployed out of the orbiter before all that happened.  
  
But, yes, you worry about stuff like that. When there are last-minute changes, you really get concerned. You wonder, has all this really been tested and has all this really been thrashed out? Are we really sure that this is what we need to do?  
  
The way you did commands on that thing was, you could send commands and you had a set of three dials and you dialed in a set of numbers and then you hit a switch that said ‘Execute that command.’  Well, the command was determined by what three numbers were set in there, and they gave us some numbers that we’d never used before. You had no way of knowing, really, whether that’s right or not right. But it seemed to work okay. At least the deployment went fine, and the failure afterward had nothing to do with the commands we sent. So I guess the guys were right.”_  
  
\- STS-6 Mission Specialist Donald Peterson (November 2002)

—————

LOOSE ITEMS  
  
At 2:04 p.m. CST, as the mission clock reached MET one hour 34 minutes and Challenger began her second orbit, the crew activated the payload bay doors, which opened very smoothly. TV pictures showed the TDRS-A/IUS payload lying in the bay, but also patches of the Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation thermal protection system hanging loose off the starboard OMS pod, exposing the vulnerable skin of Challenger like an open wound.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control. Bermuda has loss of signal. Both of Challenger’s payload bay doors were opened as the spacecraft passed out of range of Bermuda. Commander Paul Weitz has reported seeing something sticking out of the OMS pods and at this time we plan a television pass over Merritt Island tracking station during the next continental United States pass. As Weitz crossed the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, he reported seeing large fires to the south and he reported that debris is starting to float out of the payload bay. Said he’s seen a coat button, or what looked like a coat button. The television will be used to take a look at the OMS pods. Just at LOS the crew was reminded of which locker contained the binoculars in case they wanted to use those for a better look. Dakar is the next station with overlapping coverage through Ascension Island; that acquisition in about three minutes 15 seconds. At one hour 49 minutes 25 seconds, this is shuttle control.  
  
Obviously the result of launch stresses, the damage to the least critical of the TPS components was not thought to pose a reentry problem. “The damage, whatever it is, is aft of the new blanket that was put on to cover the OMS pod; it is not a new blanket,” explained Flight Director Jay Greene during the afternoon change-of-shift briefing. “It appears to be in the forward lower corners of the thermal blankets that were carried by the Columbia in the same locations. It appears that the nomex blankets are lifting up in the corners in two spots and the preliminary analysis is that it should be no problem.”  
  
”The area is rather a cool area; maximum expected temperatures are on the order of 600 to 700 degrees,“ Flight Director Greene pointed out. “That area… and that’s a surface temperature that I just gave you… that area covers a graphite epoxy structure. At the worst case we could expect to see some local overheating, perhaps some minor local damage, but nothing to cause any great threat to the vehicle.”  
  
So, Greene emphasized, “there is no imminent danger of any sort.” Nevertheless, the damaged area gave rise to a few worrying moments so early in the flight. But even while they were looking at the TPS damage, the crew completed a full systems checkout of the new orbiter, and then started concentrating on the payload deployment. Two hours into the mission, at 2:31 p.m. CST:  
  
CapCom (Dick Covey): And P.J., you got a go to turn the high-load evap off, and a go for vernier control.  
  
Weitz: Okay, thank you. You guys are right on time today.  
  
CapCom: We try to please… Challenger, Houston, you might get a water tank bravo message here shortly. You can disregard that, and you can press on with your star tracker door opening and procedures.  
  
Weitz: Okay, thank you… Okay, star tracker doors are open; they opened in seven seconds.  
  
CapCom: Roger… And Challenger, we’re going LOS here, we’ll be with you next at Botswana at 2:07.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control, Challenger out of range at Ascension, next acquisition through Botswana in two and a half minutes. CapCom Dick Covey passed up the go for the orbital operations to the Challenger’s crew. And Commander P.J. Weitz has now determined that the objects sticking out of the OMS pod appear to be tiles, pieces of insulation. We’ll take a look at that with the television over the Merritt Island tracking station on the next revolution. He also reported ice near the vertical fin, a tree of ice six to seven inches high.  
  
The –z star tracker has failed a self test; the –z star tracker points straight up. And we passed up a report about the ops 1 recorder, which has been bulky and providing a problem the last few minutes. However, just after LOS the INCO, the Integrated Communications System Officer Al Pennington, reported that the ops 1 recorder has been reestablished and is now operating. He will continue to troubleshoot that. We’re about 40 seconds away from acquisition through Botswana. Botswana is a UHF voice only station, no telemetry data. We’ll stand by for acquisition there… Mission Elapsed Time is two hours seven minutes. This is shuttle control Houston.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you through Botswana for seven minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston.

—————-

CHECKOUT PHASE  
  
Mounted on the base of TDRS-A, the $50 million IUS booster was held securely in Challenger’s cargo bay by the doughnut-shaped tilt table, alternatively known as the Airborne Support Equipment (ASE). As well as providing the crew with an ability to hoist the entire 14-meter-long stack from a horizontal position to the deployment angle of 59 degrees, it incorporated electronics, batteries and cabling to enable Musgrave and Peterson to issue commands during the lengthy checkout of both the satellite and booster.  
  
The ASE included a low-response spreader beam and torsion bar mechanism to reduce spacecraft dynamic loads to less than a third of what might be achieved without the system. It was secured into Challenger’s payload bay by means of six standard, non-deployable attachment fittings, which mated to the ASE’s forward and aft frames, and two payload retention latch actuators.  
  
Upon arrival in orbit, the shuttle was oriented with its payload bay facing Earthward, in order that the IUS and its precious satellite did ot experience excessive thermal loads from the varying solar illumination during orbital flight. The entire payload, during this time, was supported by Challenger’s onboard electricity-generating fuel cells, although the ASE included its own batteries to take over in the event of a power interruption.  
  
CapCom: Looks like you’ve got a missile in your bay pointed right at you.

TDRS-A/IUS deployment took several hours to prepare. A long series of hardware and communications checks was necessary to ensure that the payload had survived the launch phase, it being anticipated that the payload be returned to Earth if serious problems were found. All four astronauts were involved in the deployment, thought Story Musgrave as MS1 had chief responsibility for checkout and deployment procedures. Three hours after launch, shortly after 3:28 p.m. CST:  
  
CapCom: And Story, the IUS checkout was good. And we’ve got about 30 seconds to LOS; we’ll see you over the mainland in a couple of minutes, and we’re ready to copy those times if you got them, Story.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle mission control. We’ve had Loss of Signal through Hawaii station, reacquire again in about a minute and a half over the mainland…  
  
Musgrave: Houston, MS1.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead.  
  
Musgrave: We went to internal power 2:54, and we’re now on orbiter power 58.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy both of those.  
  
PAO: That last transmission occurred when we should have been out of reach from the ground station; in fact we did get pretty good voice. Mission Specialist Story Musgrave downlinked the time that IUS went on internal power and went back to orbiter power. Harold Draughan, Flight Director, and his Crystal Team of flight controllers assumed direction of the mission during the Hawaii pass. CapCom is now Jon McBride. During that Hawaii pass rather significant checkout of the IUS avionics was performed, setting up the boosters for the first attempt by the satellite control facility at Sunnyvale, California, to communicate directly with the stage, which will be attempted through the ground station at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Coming up momentarily, we should have Acquisition of Signal again in just a few moments…  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, we’re back with you through Buckhorn for about seven minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger-dodger, how you doing, Jon?  
  
CapCom: Doing just great, and we did copy the internal power transfer times.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
Musgrave: And that check was all normal, the command word was 000, Jon.  
  
CapCom: That sounds great, and it looked all nominal from the ground.  
  
Weitz: Are you ready for another phenomenon report, Jon?  
  
CapCom: Standing by.  
  
Weitz: Okay, once again, it looks like to me like a significant amount of ice built up around the edge of the nozzle on the center engine – we think that’s where it is. I can’t think anyplace else it’d be coming from. If you look back past the vertical fin, you can see this significant build up of ice sticking up an ice fence back here. It looks to me, it must be on the engine bell.  
  
CapCom: We copy.  
  
Musgrave: Jon, command enable is in RF and the direct checks…  
  
CapCom: We copy that, Story… And a direct check will be coming at you at 3:05.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, we’ll look for it…. And we see it here.  
  
CapCom: Alrighty, and we’ll go into a two-minute keyhole at 3:09, and we’ll also pick up MILA TV at 3:12 or so.  
  
Musgrave: We’re going back to hard line, Jon.  
  
CapCom: Copy…. And Story, still some more good news; the IUS direct check was good.  
  
Musgrave: Thanks.  
  
At 3:45 p.m. CST, while Commander Weitz was still describing the ice build up on Challenger’s aft section, Story Musgrave reported the current status regarding payload checkout:  
  
Musgrave: John, for the TDRS people – we’ve locked on to both A and B receivers; I have four asterisks.  
  
CapCom: That’s good news, Story… And Story, we’d like for you to turn the modulation off, wait fifteen seconds, and turn it back on.  
  
Musgrave: Affirmative, sure will before we get (garble)… It’s off, Jon.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Wait fifteen seconds and back on.  
  
Musgrave: Let me give you the entry there in case you missed it. When I turned the payload interrogator on, I immediately got a signal presence on B. I swept for the checklist for ninety seconds. I did not get an asterisk on A. I turned the mode ON, I then got four asterisks.  
  
CapCom: Okay, that’s the way we copied it.  
  
Shortly after that, at 3:50 p.m. CST, as Challenger went LOS again and flow out over the Atlantic Ocean, the Houston PAO reported, “This is Mission Control Houston at three hours 20 minutes in the Challenger’s first flight. That completed a very significant pass in terms of payload preparations. During the first part on that pass over the United States, the Vandenberg tracking station at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, verified its ability to communicate with the IUS, or upper stage, her. And later on that pass the Payload Operations Control Center at White Sands verified its ability to command the TDRS. Payloads officer J.J. Conwell reported to Flight Director Harold Draughon that payload operations checkout to this point has gone nominally and that we’re in good shape to proceed with subsequent checkouts.”  
  
As Challenger flew on her third orbit around Earth and was picked up by Ascension Island shortly before 4:00 p.m. CST, the PAO gave more information on the checkouts: “This is shuttle mission control. We will pick up air-to-ground again in about a minute there through Ascension Island. When Challenger comes within range of Ascension, the Ascension ground station will send commands to the orbiter in S-band, where they will be transferred to the TDRS by the small transmitter, the payload interrogator, in the bay. The first test will be to verify basic TDRS ability to respond to commands; a second key test will be at about Mission Elapsed Time four hours 15 minutes, when the ground station at Guam will attempt to broadcast signals to TDRS, routed through the… routed from the White Sands Payload Operations Control Center. The asterisks that Story Musgrave referred to earlier verify signal presence...”  
  
CapCom: Okay, Story, take the S-band payload control to command.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And we had a good PI check.  
  
Musgrave: Outstanding.  
  
CapCom: And Story, the PI is off.  
  
Musgrave: Thank you.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston…  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead, Jon.  
  
CapCom: Disregard… You got 30 seconds left here at Ascension; we’ll see you down at Botswana at 3:42.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
At 4:09 p.m. CST, the Houston PAO summarized what had happened during the last a few minutes: “This is shuttle mission control at 3 hours 39 minutes into the flight. Challenger now out of range at the Ascension Island station; we will reacquire again in about three and a half minutes through Botswana. Payloads officer reported they had good check of the payload interrogator during that pass, as the Ascension station transmitted some commands to the TDRS in S-band.” And there was still more good news. “During that pass, Challenger Commander, Paul Weitz, reported they performed a good alignment using both star trackers.” That alleviated earlier concerns about the –z star tracker, the upward-looking star tracker that had failed an earlier self test. I was in fact working properly.  
  
“We had anticipated some problems with the self test of the star trackers preflight,” Flight Director Harold Draughon said later. “The self test bits had been erroneously being set on occasion in the pad testing. That did show up in flight; we went ahead with the normal procedures for the first alignment and indeed were successful in getting a second star tracker aligned. If for some reason you lose one of the star trackers,” Draughon explained, “it’s a fairly simple procedure to use just one of those trackers. That requires that we do one more attitude maneuver to get the other star measurement, but that would not be a problem.”  
  
A little more than four hours into the mission, Jon McBride relayed the next piece of good news to the Challenger crew: “And we had a good TDRS direct check.” – “Fantastic,” replied Story Musgrave, “we had a normal engage.”  
  
CapCom: That’s wonderful.  
  
Musgrave: The time was one minute and 15 seconds.  
  
At about 4:52 p.m. CST, Mission Control reported, “We’ve lost signal through the Guam station, reacquire in about six minutes through Hawaii. The TDRS checks… payload checks continue to go very well. That pass verified White Sands’ ability to transmit commands to the satellite through the Guam tracking station. That checkout went very quickly, and about midway through the pass over Guam they were able to terminate those satellite checks and reconfigure the ground station for orbiter support.”  
  
PAO: The crew is advised that the ops recorder reported failed earlier is now working nominally. The delta camera, the forward starboard payload bay camera, that showed us the OMS pod pictures earlier, was reported by Don Peterson to have no zoom capability and the INCO here in the Mission Control Center plans to later on in the flight try to see if he can command that camera to zoom independently.  
  
Mission Specialist Story Musgrave was given a go ahead to perform checks on the actuators. That was scheduled for later in the timeline, but payload checkout has gone so well and is well ahead of schedule, that he was given go ahead to perform those actuator checks some ten to fifteen minutes earlier than called for in the summary timeline.  
  
Musgrave will power the actuators and the IUS tilt table, which supports the payload, and he’ll verify that the actuators work properly both in the upward and downward drive modes. Later on in the mission, at about 8 hours and 35 minutes into the flight, the tilt table will be elevated to 29 degrees, which will be an interim position for the TDRS transmission tests. And the deployment angle of 59 degree tilt will be actuated at about 9 hours 20 minutes into the flight. Challenger on its fourth orbit of the Earth, Challenger’s systems continue to perform nominally, checkout of the TDRS and the IUS continue to go very well, in fact ahead of schedule.

————-

Shortly before 5:00 p.m. CST, the Houston PAO explained, “We’re just moments away from Acquisition of Signal through Hawaii. Plans are to transmit a state vector to the IUS guidance system. Since the Challenger’s state vector was recently updated, they plan to have new data sent to the Inertial Upper Stage and that advisory will be passed to the crew by CapCom Jon McBride during this pass. And we should have voice contact momentarily, at Mission Elapsed Time 4 hours 28 minutes.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, we’re back with you over Hawaii for eight minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: And MS1, Houston.  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead, Jon.  
  
CapCom: Yes, Story, we’ve seen larger than expected errors in velocity and position on the IUS state vector. We’ve just sent up a state vector to the orbiter, and we’d like for you to transfer that vector. Want you to stay in 16 kilobytes while you do it, and it’s an item one, followed by command 21.  
  
Musgrave: I know that, and you’re going to be mean and not let me look at it, aren’t you?  
  
CapCom: You guessed it. And we want you to record the time, MET on that.  
  
Musgrave: And have you sent up the orbiters state, yet?  
  
CapCom: Yes, Story, it was updated at Guam, and it’s ready whenever you are.  
  
Musgrave: Here I go.  
  
At 5:06 p.m. CST the Challenger left the range of the Hawaii tracking station. Two minutes later she was picked up by Buckhorn for a six and a half-minute communications pass, during which the STS-6 crew continued testing the TDRS/IUS payload, performed computer checkups and initiated the MLR middeck experiment. Meanwhile, the updated state vector led to a new deployment time for the TDRS at MET 10 hours, one minute 53 seconds.  
  
During an extensive LOS period, with air-to-ground communications expected again at MET 6 hours 54 minutes (7:24 p.m. CST) over the Botswana tracking station, the Houston PAO explained that they now got all payload bay cameras zoomed out and were going to leave them there for the TDRS deploy, in fact for the remainder of the flight..  
  
PAO: The crew was advised that the control team has elected to leave the TV cameras zoomed out. In case the zoom mechanism fails, Mission Control wants the cameras zoomed out for better view of the deployment; so they’ll be zoomed out and fixed at that position for the mission. And as the TV showed the Challenger is in a configuration (…) with its payload bay positioned toward the Earth, as it has been through most of the pre-deployment activities, because the TDRS system can’t tolerate direct sunlight thermal conditions in the payload bay. Very extensive Loss of Signal period now for about another 35 minutes before we reacquire; the Challenger currently on its fifth orbit of the Earth… Mission Elapsed Time 6 hours 20 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
When Challenger was flying over the Pacific again, the crew reported, “We’re going over Hawaii, but it looks pretty cloudy.” Replied Jon McBride, “And we’re still looking for your sunglasses.” At 8:18 p.m. CST, Mission Elapsed Time 7 hours 48 minutes:  
  
PAO: We’ll reacquire signal again in twenty minutes through Santiago. During that pass, Mission Commander Paul Weitz announced that they had readjusted the cabin temperature upward. Downlink data indicates that temperature onboard Challenger is 77 degrees presently. And the crew has been advised that three of the five gyros in the IUS alignment system are operating.  
  
At about 8:40 p.m. CST Jon McBride told Mission Specialist Donald Peterson where to find the crew’s sunglasses; they had been searching for them for some time now...  
  
CapCom: Okay, Pete, I got some locations for sunglasses if you want to copy that.  
  
Peterson: Okay, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Okay, CDR’s are in MA16 Gulf. That’s MA16 Gulf. PLT’s are in MF43 Gulf. Yours are in MF71 Gulf… and Story should either have his, or they are in the flight data file container.  
  
Peterson: Okay, I copy that. Thank you.  
  
CapCom: You’re welcome. And we’ve got about twenty seconds to go here at Santiago. We’ll see you at Botswana at 8:29 MET, which is 8:59 p.m here.  
  
It was 8:41 p.m. CST when the Houston PAO announced: “Mission Elapsed Time is presently 8 hours 11 minutes, and we will shortly be coming up on a significant series of milestones and the deployment of the TDRS.” Nine minutes later he said, “Checkout activities will accelerate significantly as the crew tilts the table to 29 degrees and additional checks to the system are made prior to deployment.”  
  
Then, at 8:54 p.m. CST, the PAO elaborated: “This is shuttle mission control at 8 hours 24 minutes. We will acquire signal again in about five minutes through Botswana, coming up on some significant checks of the payload. Right now the crew should be maneuvering the orbiter to attitude to enable checks of the TDRS. Story Musgrave should soon receive go ahead to release the payload retention latches and elevate the IUS tilt table to 29 degrees, which of course is the interim position for TDRS transmission tests. And Musgrave will also relock the payload interrogator back onto the TDRS frequency. The Indian Ocean Station will send a command to the TDRS by the S-band system to assure that it works. A new orbiter state vector will be transferred to the IUS, and IUS late checkout will be performed, where we again transfer the IUS to internal power and send self test commands to run avionics strings to the IUS.”

Shortly before 9:00 p.m. CST, contact between the orbiter Challenger and Houston was reestablished through the Botswana tracking station.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, with you at Botswana for six minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Roger. TDRS is on the way up; it’s moving well.  
  
CapCom: Sounds good.  
  
Musgrave: Ascending at about 14 degrees – all nominal.  
  
CapCom: Great.  
  
Musgrave: That is a big booster.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle mission control. The crew verifying that the tilt table is presently elevating up to the 29 degree checkout position and that it was at their last report at about 14 degrees.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, we’re at 29 degrees, Jon, and with three minutes and 35 minutes.  
  
CapCom: Copy. Thank you, sir.  
  
Musgrave: Houston, MS1.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead Story.  
  
Musgrave: Do you need another (garble) that item 6?  
  
CapCom: It’s still looking good, Story. We don’t think so.  
  
Musgrave: Thank you… Houston, MS1.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead… Go ahead, Story.  
  
Musgrave: Jon, powering up the PI I did get a signal presence on the B receiver. Do you want me to go ahead and sweep to try to get A in?  
  
CapCom: Yes, sir. We’d like for you to go ahead and sweep and try to get A.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. Here we go.  
  
CapCom: We’re going to lose you shortly. We’ll see you over the Indian Ocean Station in a couple of minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, Jon. I’ve been sweeping for 40 seconds.  
  
CapCom: Copy that, Story. We’re going to lose you shortly. We’ll see you over Indian Ocean in about a minute and a half.  
  
Musgrave: (garble) IOS, a minute and a half.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Go ahead and apply modulation.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control at 8 hours and 36 minutes. We’ll reacquire again through Indian Ocean in about a minute. Astronaut Story Musgrave reporting his functions in verifying the payload interrogator with a TDRS check and sweeping for signal strength…  
  
Ten minutes later, at 9:16 p.m. CST, the PAO explained the latest developments, while Challenger was LOS IOS again and approaching the next AOS at Guam, expected about twenty minutes later. There still was some concern about two of the IUS gyros which could not be activated yet. “Mission Specialist Story Musgrave advised during that pass to stay off of the payload interrogator until Mission Elapsed Time 9 hours 12 minutes, at which time he’s scheduled to lock the interrogator onto the IUS transponder. They want him to stay off the device for that period in order to enable the Air Force Satellite Control Facility at Sunnyvale, California, to attempt to bring the other two gyros online.”  
  
“Although the IUS is flight ready with three gyros, they are going to attempt to bring the other two online to enhance reliability,” the PAO said. “The Air Force Satellite Control Facility will attempt direct command to the IUS through the Guam station. Assuming nominal operations, deployment will occur in one hour and 13 minutes from now. We are 18 minutes from reacquisition of signal, Mission Elapsed Time is 8 hours 48 minutes 30 seconds… this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
Over Guam another important milestone was reached in the deploy preparations:  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you over Guam. And Story, verify that the PI is locked to the TDRS.  
  
Musgrave: No, it isn’t. When we went over the pass, I turned it off. Let me lock it on now.  
  
CapCom: Okay.  
  
Musgrave: PI lock on confirmed.  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm. Lock the PI to the TDRS and verify command path enable is RF.  
  
Musgrave: Verified. RF modulation is on the PI. We’ve got a signal presence and command lock on the receiver.  
  
CapCom: Copy. We’re coming up with some commands.

————

GO FOR DEPLOY  
  
At about 9:39 p.m. CST, when Challenger went LOS Guam and was approaching the next AOS, the Houston PAO once more summed up where things were standing right now. ”We will reacquire signal again in five minutes to five and a half minutes through Hawaii. The payloads officer J.J. Conwell has advised Flight Director Harold Draughon that he successfully uplinked commands to the TDRS. Astronaut Story Musgrave verified that he saw command lock and signal presence in the system during the Guam pass and the payloads officer also verified that Sunnyvale successfully commanded the IUS during the Guam pass as well… A very short pass of less than two minutes duration through Guam, but an awful lot of commands was uplinked through the system during that time. We will acquire again in four minutes, almost five minutes through Hawaii. Mission Elapsed Time 9 Hours 10 minutes 40 seconds, this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
A few minutes later the PAO continued, “We’re about a minute away from acquisition of signal through Hawaii, about a seven-minute pass during which Sunnyvale is going to verify the configuration and status of the IUS and needs a quick turnaround from the vehicle here to enable the Flight Director to uplink attitude instructions to the crew, so that they can get the proper attitude for a deployment go/no-go at Santiago. Mission Elapsed Time 9 hours 15 minutes and voice contact should occur momentarily.” – It was 9:45 p.m. CST.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, with you over Hawaii for about seven and a half minutes, and I have got a slight update to the deploy time.  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Due deploy time, 10:01 plus 58.  
  
Musgrave: Ten hours, one minute, 58 seconds.  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm, Story. And depending on the success of our TDRS check here, if it’s good we want you to be in the deploy attitude at Santiago; if it’s not, of course, then the TDRS check attitude.  
  
Musgrave We got you. The PI is locked up to the IUS. No sweep was required. We’re setting at RF 16 kilobytes on the link switch, which they’re locked.  
  
CapCom: Copy. And go ahead and get the RM heaters on.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, we will do that.  
  
CapCom: And Story, we may not get you the go for the deploy here at Hawaii; it might have to wait until Santiago.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: If the TDRS check is good, we want you to be ready to deploy, or go for deploy, at Santiago.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
Shortly before the Challenger was going LOS Hawaii at 9:53 p.m. CST, for a scheduled duration of about the next twenty minutes, Jon McBride was finally able to uplink the good news Story Musgrave and the rest of the crew had been anxiously waiting for during the last few minutes. And the MS1 seemingly couldn’t believe his ears…  
  
CapCom: And some late news for you, Story. We have a go for deploy.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, now we can still hold the umbilical to Santiago there.  
  
CapCom: No. Go ahead and follow nominal procedures. You’ve got a go for deploy.  
  
Musgrave: We’ll pick up the (garble) at deploy minus 20 minutes then.  
  
CapCom: That is correct. And we’ll see you down at Santiago.  
  
Musgrave: And thanks.  
  
CapCom: Wow!  
  
“There’s a significant expression of relief here in the control center with that go for deploy,” the Houston PAO commented. A little later, at 10:04 p.m. CST, he gave a recap of the sequence of events over the past thirty minutes. “At Mission Elapsed Time approximately 9 hours 6 minutes during about  a two-minute Acquisition of Signal period over Guam, the Air Force Satellite Control Facility at Sunnyvale, California, through the Guam station, transmitted commands to the IUS intending to bring online the two gyros which had been earlier believed failed. Those commands were successfully uplinked to the IUS during the Guam pass.”  
  
The summary continued, “At about Mission Elapsed Time 9 hours and 15 minutes, over Hawaii, the satellite control facility then interrogated the IUS, instructing the onboard software to restore redundancy management, which in effect means asking the interrogator to look at all five gyros to compare the data. That done, the data agreed, indicating all five gyros were operational. Sunnyvale received that information from the IUS during the Hawaii pass, took a look at the data, determined the five gyros were in agreement, and gave Mission Control a go for deploy. During that same period of the Hawaii pass, White Sands attempted… and successfully attempted direct communications with the TDRS using the Hawaii station. The successful checkout of the TDRS resulted in a go for deploy from the payload operations center at White Sands.”  
  
“Now, with approval for deploy received, Commander Paul Weitz and Pilot Karol Bobko will maneuver the Challenger into a payload deployment attitude. The spacecraft will be slightly upside down; that deployment attitude is based on IUS guidance needs. Challenger is going to be slightly upside down; the crew will be able to see the Earth out the overhead windows. The orbiter will be in a slight roll to the right, with the nose pointed into the velocity vector. Mission Elapsed Time is now 9 hours 38 minutes (10:08 p.m. CST), deployment is about 24 minutes away.”  
  
“Formal countdown for deployment begins at twenty minutes prior to the planned separation. Deploy time is now Mission Elapsed Time 10 hours one minute 58 seconds,” the Houston PAO continued with a preview of what would happen next. “During deployment Mission Commander Paul Weitz will be in the starboard aft station, flying the orbiter through the use of rotational and translational hand controllers located at that starboard aft station. He’ll be there in order to maneuver Challenger out of the way of the IUS/TDRS stack in case an improper deployment occurs.”  
  
“Mission Specialist Don Peterson will be in the aft crew station at the center position observing the operations. Story Musgrave will be in the port side of the aft crew station operating several switches. Challenger Pilot Karol Bobko will be in the forward cockpit managing the orbiter. The deployment is a manual operation, no automatic procedures involved. Story Musgrave will enable some pyro electrical buses and activate switches to effect the deployment. There are no commands sent by computer to effect deployment; they’re all performed manually.”  
  
PAO: We’re about a minute and a half away from Acquisition of Signal, deployment about 21 1/2 minutes away. The countdown for deployment begins in a minute and a half, and we’ll stand by for voice contact with Challenger and verification of some of the milestones associated with pre-deployment activities such as tilting the platform to the deployment attitude of 59 degrees. Mission Elapsed Time 9 hours 41 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, we’re back with you over Santiago for five and a half minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Roger, Houston. We’re just picking up at minus twenty minutes.  
  
CapCom: That’s super.  
  
The next steps followed in short order. The crew raised the IUS tilt table carrying the payload combination to its required 59 degree deployment position and disconnected the IUS/orbiter connections.  
  
Musgrave: Internal power on the IUS was at 9:43.  
  
CapCom: Copy.  
  
Musgrave: TDRS to IUS batteries at 9:44.  
  
CapCom: Copy.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle mission control. Story Musgrave has transferred the IUS to internal power and transferred the TDRS from orbiter power to the IUS batteries. Two umbilicals leading from Challenger into the payload will be released electrically. If they should fail to sever, however, they’ll be physically pulled out as that tilt table is elevated to the 59 degree deployment position. That will occur about six minutes before separating… before deployment.  
  
Musgrave: Doing the umbilicals, Houston.  
  
CapCom: Copy.  
  
Musgrave: Umbilicals are released.  
  
CapCom: We copy.  
  
PAO: Both Mission Control and Story Musgrave verify the umbilicals have been severed. One minute and a half away from LOS…  
  
Musgrave: We are on our way to 59.  
  
CapCom: Sounds great.  
  
PAO: Musgrave reporting the tilt table elevating.  
  
CapCom: We’ve got about a minute to go here at Santiago. We’ll check in with you at Ascension. Just stand by, we’ll be with you about two minutes before deploy… and good luck.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, thank you, Jon.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle mission control; we’re about 14 minutes away from deployment. Mission Elapsed Time is 9 hours 48 minutes (10:18 p.m. CST). We’ll acquire signal again in eleven minutes through Ascension for a brief pass. Deployment is planned with the vehicle over the Central Atlantic in darkness, positioned in darkness so that the IUS’, Inertial Upper Stage’s guidance system can look for stars without concern that they’ll be bleached out by sunlight. The crew has a two-minute window in which to deploy the payload. A delay beyond two minutes would dictate scrubbing the deployment to another orbit opportunity. Another deployment opportunity exists at a Mission Elapsed Time of 11 hours 30 minutes, and still another opportunity the rev following that at Mission Elapsed Time 13 hours.

At 10:27 p.m. CST, as Challenger was flying on her eighth orbit in the Earth’s shadow over the southern Atlantic Ocean, floodlights in the cargo bay illuminated the scene. The Houston PAO went on the air again, telling everyone they would probably miss the big moment.  
  
“We are about two and a half minutes away from Acquisition of Signal through Ascension Island and about five minutes away from deployment of the TDRS/IUS. The duration of coverage through Ascension on this pass is just a little over two minutes. In fact, it looks as though according to the communications model that we’re going to miss observing… miss communication with the crew by about twenty seconds before the deployment. But the INCO, the Integrated Communications System Officer Sandy Briscoe, is optimistically predicting that we will retain voice contact with the crew through deployment. But it’s going to be awfully close, if we’re able to communicate with them at all. And if that’s not the case and we can’t talk to them, they’ll be contacting sixteen minutes from now through the Indian Ocean Station.”  
  
“Within a minute of deployment, Mission Commander Paul Weitz is going to perform a Reaction Control System burn to send Challenger nose down and away from the payload, which should be hanging over Challenger’s crew cabin at that point. That RCS burn would be about 2.2 feet per second.”

—————-

IT WAS A GOOD DEPLOY  
  
It was 10:31:58 p.m. CST, as Challenger flew 1,400 miles east of Rio de Janeiro,  when Story Musgrave flicked a switch on the aft instrument panel which sent the TDRS on its way, against the backdrop of a wandering half Moon. The satellite was pushed out over the top of Challenger’s flight deck at a speed of 39.4 feet (12 meters) per second. “I learned how big it was when it came out,” Karol Bobko said later. “I was up in front, in the pilot’s seat, and both (Musgrave and Peterson) said something like ‘Oh my God’’ when this big satellite came out over the cockpit.”   
  
  
PAO: The Mission Elapsed Time is now 10 hours two and a half minutes. Just at the tail end of that pass over Ascension when in fact the mission… the communications model indicated we should have had LOS, we were still receiving data and the payloads officer J.J. Conwell and the satellite tracking facility at Sunnyvale verified payload deployment on time. Now the Mission Control team has been advised that the IUS computers have entered the flight phase. We’ll have Acquisition of Signal in about 11 minutes through Indian Ocean Station for a pass of five and a half minutes in duration. But just to repeat, the Mission Control Team has confirmed deployment of the TDRS/IUS on time; unofficially that deployment time would be at Mission Elapsed Time 10 hours, one minute 58 seconds. That is unofficial and we’ll get verification from the crew when we get voice contact again through Indian Ocean Station. Mission Elapsed Time 10 hours four minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
Two and a half minutes later the PAO gave additional information on what would happen now that the TDRS/IUS combination was on its way to geosynchronous orbit. “And their Reaction Control System burn was intended to improve the tolerance of the distance between the vehicle and the separating payload, IUS… the Inertial Upper Stage. The IUS then brings its avionics capability into operation and is going to prepare to move TDRS into a geosynchronous orbit. Sunny vale does not need to send any commands to the IUS for the rest of its flight. If it’s performing nominally that is. All the IUS functions are located… are loaded in the onboard software. About ten minutes after deployment, which means just about four minutes from now, the hydrazine reaction control jets onboard the IUS will be commanded as part of the vehicle’s preprogrammed sequence. In about 12 minutes after the separation from the orbiter, the IUS reaction control jets will command the first thermal roll maneuver intended to keep the TDRS’ temperatures within limits. And we should receive verification of some of those events from the satellite control facility at Sunnyvale. Again, there are no detailed or dedicated IUS or TDRS displays here in Mission Control in Houston, and the bulk of data we receive on those systems is wahrt is relayed to us from those paylod operations centers at those appropriate locations. We’re about five minutes away from Acquisition of Signal through Indian Ocean Station, Mission Elapsed Time 10 hours, nine minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
A few minutes later, at 10:42 p.m. CST, the PAO added, “Deployment occurred almost eleven minutes ago, which means by this time the hydrazine reaction control jets on the IUS should have been commanded as part of the vehicle’s preprogrammed sequence, and we should get verification of that through Indian Ocean Station data as well as some reaction from the crew on what the deployment looked like from their view – and, in fact, voice verification that it was a nominal deployment as it appeared to be through the residual data we got just before going out of sight of the Ascension Island site tracking station.”  
  
  
PAO: Challenger in its eighths orbit of the Earth; we expect voice contact with the crew again in about a half a minute, Mission Elapsed Time is now ten hours 13 minutes 41 seconds, this is Mission Control.  
  
CapCom: Hello there, we’re with you over Indian Ocean for four and a half minutes on the UHF and a reminder not to do the secondary check on that left OMS.  
  
Weitz: We won’t do that, and it was a good deploy, Jon.  
  
CapCom: That sounds great.  
  
Weitz: Jon, that’s really spectacular views of it over the overhead windows. When it first came in the sunlight, it was tremendously bright. Then we got it against the Earth.  
  
CapCom: Hope you’ve got some good TV for us tomorrow.   
  
  
Moments later Jon McBride told the astronauts, “Sunnyvale and White Sands send you a special attaboy!” The Challenger crew replied, “Well, we’re all in this thing together. Thanks.” The ASE tilt table was reported stowed on time and Challenger went LOS IOS, expected to be heard from again over Guam at 11:09 p.m. CST. For a while the astronauts watched the satellite drift away further and further before Paul Weitz nudged Challenger away from the satellite a greater distance still, to avoid the plume of engine exhaust when TDRS climbed up to geosynchronous orbit. At 10:50 p.m. CST, the OMS engines were fired for the third time during mission to increase separation distance from the payload, a burn time of 21 seconds imparting a velocity change of 39.4 feet (12 meters) per second to Challenger, modifying her orbit slightly to a more elliptical shape of 204 by 178 miles (328 by 287 kilometers) and separating her from the TDRS/IUS combination. Challenger backed off, her job complete.  
  
“This is really a cool vehicle,” the shuttle astronauts told Mission Control. A notion probably shared by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whose message was read to the astronauts by CapCom Jon McBride about 45 minutes after the successful satellite deployment:  
  
  
  _“On behalf of the American people, I send astronauts Paul Weitz, Karol Bobko, Story Musgrave, and Donald Peterson our proudest congratulations on the launch of the Challenger. Today you are among the few people of this planet who have crossed into a domain and experienced a dimension those of us here on the ground can barely imagine. You are no longer earthbound.  
  
The Challenger is an appropriate name for your spacecraft, because you genuinely are challengers. You and your crew are daring the future and the old ways of thinking that kept us looking to the heavens rather than traveling to them. You symbolize just how high America’s hopes can soar.  
  
May God bless you and bring you safely home to us, again.   
  
Signed: Ronald Reagan” _  
  
  
Weitz: Well, we’re very appreciative of that, Jon. And Mr. President, we appreciate it very much. We sure are proud to have the opportunity to do it.  
  
CapCom: And we’re all proud of you here in Mission Control, of course, and we’re going to lose you in about twenty seconds… see you for a short pass at Hawaii.  
  
Weitz: Roger.

—————

AS THE NIGHT MOVES IN  
  
At 11:26 p.m. CST the Houston PAO announced that the first stage burn was scheduled within the next minute, exactly 55 minutes after deploy. “At this time, the IUS/TDRS stack should be approximately crossing the Equator in the middle of the Pacific. Onboard software will ignite the first stage for a burn of two minutes 33 seconds. The stage one motor provides 62,000 pounds of thrust. This will place the IUS/TDRS stack in a geosynchronous transfer orbit, resulting in a continuous climb to its ultimate 22,300 mile altitude. And we, of course, have no displays of that information here in Houston, and we’ll be standing by for confirmation of this event from the Air Force’s satellite control facility at Sunnyvale, where the IUS payload operations center is located. Once again, we’ll be in an LOS period for about twenty minutes, standing by for a next voice contact through Santiago, Chile. At 10 hours 57 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control, Houston.”  
  
And then, at about 11:46 p.m. CDT, the PAO went on the air again. “This is shuttle mission control at a Mission Elapsed Time of 11 hours 16 minutes, coming up on Acquisition of Signal in about two minutes through Santiago, Chile. And CapCom Jon McBride will advise the crew of the data acquired on the first-stage burn of the IUS. That burn didn’t occur within sight of any ground stations, but the Air Force deployed two EC-135s (garble) instrumented aircraft, which were positioned so as to observe that burn. And that data will be reported to the crew during this pass. It’s meal time onboard Challenger, and the sleep period scheduled to begin in just under two hours from now, concluding what will have been a very long and active day for the Challenger crew. We’ll expect voice contact here momentarily. This is Mission Control, Houston.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, we’re with you over Santiago for about five minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston, loud and clear.  
  
CapCom: And if you would, we’d like an SM spec 1. And the IUS had a good SRM-1 burn, and also the RCS-1 burn was successful. The SRM-1 burn was a little bit short, but the RCS made up for it.  
  
Musgrave: Fantastic, Jon. You’re making our day.  
  
CapCom: No, you’re making ours.  
  
Musgrave: While we’re talking about that, I’ve got a suggestion here.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead.  
  
Musgrave: If you’d like, I’ve finished four bananas and dinner and I couldn’t think about bed right now. I’d like to start this EMU ops; let’s check out the EMUs starting on flight supplement page 23.  
  
CapCom: We’re talking about that now.  
  
  
Just moments later, shortly before the Crystal Team called it a day, Story Musgrave got a green light from Mission Control. “And Story, go ahead and perform that EMU checkout.”  
  
  
Musgrave: Fantastic. Give Armstrong and Jerry and the GNC folks a call there; they were planning on it tomorrow.  
  
CapCom: We don’t have them here with us now, Story.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
  
So, while Story Musgrave went to work on the space suits for about another hour, CapCom Jon McBride was preparing to leave his console.  
  
  
CapCom: And the Crystal Team is going to be leaving you here in about a minute and we’re going to turn you over to the “Amber” guys. It’s been a great day for the space program. We’ll see you some time tomorrow; we appreciate it very much.  
  
Musgrave: Thanks a whole bunch, Jon. It sure was a good day; you helped us out a bunch. But before you go, I’ve got a water pressure of 17.1 and a gas pressure of 0 on EMU 1, showing it’s fully charged.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy that, and we concur. We’ll lose you in about ten seconds; then we’ll see you tomorrow, guys.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. And it only took six minutes to get there.  
  
CapCom: That’s great. Adios. And by the way, the “Ambers” will see you at Guam at 12:14.  
  
  
“Amber Team” Flight Director Randy Stone told reporters during the morning press briefing the following day, “Story Musgrave was so charged up with the day’s activities that he wasn’t ready to quit when the flight plan said he was in the pre-sleep period. So he elected to get a little bit ahead and did some checkout on the space suits. Story has a real personal attachment to these space suits; he really wants to do the EVA on Flight Day Four. He accomplished a water recharge on on EMU 1, which is to be our prime EMU. This was a planned recharge of the cooling water in the backpack; that went well. He accomplished checkout of the backup space suit, and all parameters that he checked were nominal, and that suit is go for EVA.”   
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston at 13 hours 21 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (Apr. 5, 1:51 a.m. CDT). The crew of Challenger is just about reaching the end of their very busy day today. And they have had their last communication with the people in Mission Control. CapCom reported that the crew can expect a nominal day tomorrow as per the published flight plan. Apparently there will be very little then to keep the planning team busy tonight here in Mission Control. There were very few anomalies that have not been resolved during the course of the day after the successful IUS/TDRS deployment.   
  
Mission Specialist Story Musgrave continued to make preparations for the EVA that will take place on Thursday, moving ahead in the timeline and making those preparations, checking out the equipment, getting that done early. While the crew is certainly still awake at this point, judging from their recent conversations, they are officially into the scheduled sleep period. And they’re due to begin their next day’s activities in about eight hours from now. At 13 hours, 22 minute Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
So, the Challenger was operating near flawlessly and the crew was feeling fine as they went to bed. As the “night” moved in, Challenger continued her smooth 17,500 mph-glide silently through space. But then things started to go wrong elsewhere…

 

 


	20. STS-6:flight day 2

**Tuesday, April 5, 1983 (Flight Day 2) – A Close Save**  
  
FEARING THE WORST  
  
The night had been routinely quiet for those following the STS-6 mission, but around 4:45 a.m. CST, some sixteen and a half hours into the flight, the continued silence began to seem ominous. Ground controllers in Houston and at the remote payload operations control rooms in Sunnyvale, California, and White Sands, New Mexico, were awaiting word on the second major engine firing of the IUS. The one minute 43 second SRM-2 burn was scheduled for 4:41 a.m. CST and was to circularize the then elliptical orbit into a circular equatorial orbit of 22,300 miles.  
  
  
PAO (Steve Nesbitt): This is Mission Control Houston at 16 hours 26 minutes Mission Elapsed Time. The Challenger is passing over the Dakar station at this time; the crew still has about five hours remaining in their sleep period. The Flight Controllers here in Mission Control are waiting for the results of the second solid rocket motor burn of the IUS, which would boost the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite up into its geosynchronous orbit. That burn began about ten minutes ago and we should shortly be hearing some word as to whether that burn was successful. At 16 hours 27 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
Seven minutes later, at 5:04 a.m. CST, the tracking stations still had no contact with the IUS/TDRS stack. Nesbitt said, “There is some indication that shortly before that burn was initiated, at about Mission Elapsed Time 16 hours 18 minutes (4:48 a.m. CST), that there was a loss of data from the IUS/TDRS. It is uncertain at this time as to what the cause of that was and what may be the result or the current status of that spacecraft. We’ll keep you advised on that as we get further word. At 16 hours 35 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
The next PAO update, at 5:30 a.m. CST, confirmed that indeed something was wrong. “Flight controllers here in Mission Control are still waiting for word on the status of the IUS and TDRS satellite. There have been several indications of problems that occurred before or perhaps after the second solid rocket motor burn. There are very few clues at this time. The remote POCC at Sunnyvale is continuing to monitor that and troubleshoot that, trying to determine what the current status is.”  
  
Twenty-one minutes later, at 5:51 a.m. CST, Nesbitt reported: “Troubleshooting efforts continue to determine the condition of the Inertial Upper Stage and the Tracking Data Relay Satellite, which experienced some problems about the time of ignition of the second solid rocket motor, which would boost the system into geosynchronous orbit. There was a loss of data early on about that time. There have been other indications of problems, but it has been impossible to tell exactly the nature of the problem at this time, given that there is no data coming back from the IUS.”  
   
Intermittent signals from the TDRS, radar and other indicators led to a statement by Air Force IUS program manager Lt. Col. Ralph Tourino, presented by Houston PAO Steve Nesbitt at 6:07 a.m. CST: “We have an official statement from Colonel Tourino and others working on the problems apparently afflicting the IUS/TDRS combination. I will read that statement to you now:  
  
 _During the firing of the second stage of the IUS to place the TDRS at geosynchronous orbit, apparent loss of control occurred and telemetry from both the IUS and TDRS was lost. Subsequently it has been determined that the TDRS/IUS combination is most likely tumbling. Anomaly teams are at work to produce a plan to attempt to recover the spacecraft._   
  
At that point, with the IUS/TDRS combination still mated and most likely tumbling, with short-life batteries wearing down on the IUS and no responses to constant telemetry commands from the ground, the outlook for TDRS-A was bleak. By 8:00 a.m. CST, most of the world was waking up to that news, and in the NBC trailer next to Building 2 Visitor Center, correspondent Roy Neal was telling his _Today Show_ audience, “It will take a miracle to save this spacecraft.” Almost as he was speaking, a miracle came.  
  
  
BACK FROM THE BRINK  
  
At about that time, one of two things happened; experts still are not sure which. Either through the engagement of an automatic timing mechanism which separated the TDRS and the IUS, or through an eleventh-hour acknowledgement of repeated telemetry from the ground, the IUS separated from the satellite and immediately there was a decided turn for the better.  
  
“We started to transmit separation commands in the blind, not having any communications with the vehicle,” said Space Shuttle program manager Dr. Glynn Lunney, “and we jacked up the power on the network to as high as we could get and we radiated commands to jettison the IUS. We never got any signal. The deployment happened at night and by the next morning, around breakfast time, we were getting ready to give up when the network picked up a signal from the satellite.”  
  
Now on its own, the TDRS, which was spinning at 30 revolutions per minute, was able to stabilize its attitude and stopped tumbling. Ground controllers began nominal commanding sequences to deploy the solar arrays and two antennas, which was completed by 8:25 a.m. CST.  
  
Back in the NBC trailer, Roy Neal had interviewed STS-3 Pilot Gordon Fullerton for _Today’s_ final east coast newscast when it looked as if the satellite was lost. Fullerton was scheduled to meet French astronauts Jean-Loup Chretien (who flew aboard the Soviet Salyut 7 in 1982) and Patrick Baudry at Hobby Airport, but at Neal’s suggestion stayed to help bring the good news to _Today’s_ large west coast audience.  
  
At 9:13 a.m. CST, 20 hours 43 minutes into the mission, the Mission Control PAO gave another update, emphasizing that – apart from the tense IUS/TDRS situation – it had been a quiet night up there in orbit: “The Challenger is on the last few miles of orbit number 14, and about to begin orbit number 15. The crew has about a half an hour remaining in their scheduled sleep period. Things have been relatively quiet onboard the orbiter this evening. Very few things came up to occupy the ground controllers’ time. Most of the time was spent in observing ground controllers at other remote locations in their attempts to regain control of the Inertial Upper Stage and the Tracking Data and Relay Satellite. That activity appears to have had some success. I’ll read again the statement that we issued earlier this morning. That statement is:  
  
 _We believe the spacecraft has separated from the IUS. We have stabilized it, and have initiated deployment commands._  
  
Later that morning, during the 10:10 a.m. CST change-of-shift briefing in Room 135 of the JSC news center, Air Force Colonel Ralph Tourino, NASA TDRS manager Robert Aller and Marshall IUS program manager Sidney Saucier met with reporters to fill in details on the close save. TDRS-A, Aller said, was in an egg-shaped orbit with a drift rate of about 110 degrees per day to the east. The numbers for that elliptical orbit showed TDRS-A was now in a 21,950 by 13,540 statute mile orbit (35,378 by 21,786 kilometers) with a velocity of 13,458 feet (4.1 kilometers) per second at perigee, inclined 2.37 degrees to the Equator.  
  
No one could explain what had gone wrong. One theory was that the trouble lay with the IUS, which has had many developmental problems. But NASA's engineers and technicians were confident that the never-say-die spirit that carried them through past crises would save their wobbling, misplaced bird. “We are studying what we can do to correct the orbit,” TDRS manager Robert Aller, the engineer who a decade ago devised the orbital repair of Skylab after it was seriously damaged during launch, said. “We have 1,300 pounds of hydrazine aboard. We have a thruster system and we feel that with several hundred pounds of hydrazine we can significantly correct the orbit to near geosynchronous.”  
  
“This morning everybody felt that we had a patient that was dying on the table,” shuttle chief Lt. General Abrahamson summed it up, “and just a few hours later we’re all feeling like that patient was restored alive and up playing basketball. So, we felt after a period of time that this drama really had a very happy ending. And the key point is that nobody gave up throughout this entire effort.”

——-

OFF WE GO  
  
At 9:40 a.m. CST a shift handover was underway in the Mission Control Center. Planning shift Flight Director Randy Stone was relieved by Gary Coen and his team. “We were real pleased that we didn’t have any small problems nagging at us through the night,” Stone explained at the change-of-shift briefing about half an hour later. “We didn’t have a single alarm; the crew appeared to have a good night’s sleep. Normally, with a new vehicle, at least on the first flight of the Columbia, we had several alarms during the night. They were just nuisance alarms; with Challenger we had none of the nuisance alarms.”  
  
“The orbiter is in an orbit of 155 nautical miles by 177 nautical miles,” Stone said. “That orbit will be circularized later today in support of a rendezvous test objective to approximately 153 circular nautical miles; the exact orbit following a pair of burns that are scheduled today when I left the control center had not been determined. We had not done the final planning for that, for those two burns today. The planning team didn’t have much replanning to do last night. Yesterday, from the orbiter’s standpoint, was extremely nominal and very successful, and it left our team little to do in replanning today’s flight plan.”  
  
As to the IUS/TDRS situation, Houston had already filled the astronauts in, assuring them that at no time did either the crew’s, or the Challenger’s actions cause the problem. “Normally in our nightly activities on the planning team we put together a summary sheet that gives the crew an outline of the following day’s activity. And in that teleprinter message that we put up about two hours before crew wakeup, at that time we summarized the information that we had – which at that time was very, very sketchy. And we said that at wakeup time we would update the status of the IUS/TDRS, but we did tell them that we had lost contact with the IUS/TDRS shortly after the start of the SRM-2 burn.”  
  
At about 9:44 a.m. CST, shortly after Acquisition of Signal through the Dakar tracking station, Mission Control started the day by sending  the official wakeup call up to the astronauts – including recordings of “Cadets on Parade” and “The Air Force Song” performed by the United States Air Force Academy Band.

CapCom (Roy Bridges): Good morning, Challenger.  
  
Musgrave: Hi there.  
  
CapCom: Hope you guys enjoyed that. Anybody that served any time at the Blue Zoo might recognize that as “Cadets on Parade.”  
  
Musgrave: Did you just play some of that up to us?  
  
CapCom: Come on, Story, you’re breaking our heart.  
  
Musgrave: Did you say I’m breaking up bad? Let me work on it.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, we’ve got about two minutes to go in the Dakar pass. We have nothing for you. We’re standing by.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. And how are you reading MS1?  
  
CapCom: You’re five by, Story.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, we’re waking up, cleaning up, getting breakfast, and, you know, all things everybody else does at this time of the morning, or afternoon, whenever it is.  
  
CapCom: Roger that. And as I said we have nothing for you. If you want to talk over the messages any, at Indian Ocean Station we’ll be happy to do that.  
  
Musgrave: What time is that?  
  
CapCom: We’ll see you at Indian Ocean at 21:31.   
  
Musgrave: Okay, about fourteen minutes. You guys better stand by this morning. We’re going to come out the chute running hard.  
  
CapCom: We didn’t know you’d stopped, Story. You all put on an amazing performance yesterday.  
  
Musgrave: In between the CFES work I’ll be doing some work on the suits.  
  
CapCom: Roger. And we’re going LOS now. We’ll see you at Indian Ocean.  
  
Musgrave: Okeydoke.   
  
  
When Challenger came into communications range of the Indian Ocean Station at 10:01 a.m. CST, Story Musgrave asked Roy Bridges about an update on the fate of their main payload. “As soon as you get any update on how the TDRS is doing, we’re terribly interested in that.”  
  
  
CapCom: Well, I do have some words. The situation has changed somewhat for the better in the last couple of hours. So if you all are ready to listen, I’ll go over it with you.  
  
Musgrave: Yeah, I’d sure like to hear.  
  
CapCom: Okay. The latest information is that we were able to successfully separate the IUS and the TDRS. We are still working on the orbital parameters. We are not in a geosynchronous orbit and determining exactly our capability as far as orbit goes is still in work. And I’ll get back to you on that, but the rest of the good news is that the TDRS itself is in an inertial mode, stable. All of its panels and booms have been extended and locked. The power system is good. Solar arrays are generating six amps and the batteries are up to snuff. We’ve got a good telemetry lock on the A and B and the system is operating on its gyros stable; rates are zero. And also the thermal situation is good on the TDRS. So it’s a lot better than what you read in your message.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, it all sounds like how much RCS we’ve got to use to get it where it’s got to go.  
  
CapCom: Yeah, Story, and we’re looking into that now, and we don’t have an answer for you. But we’ll get back as soon as we do.  
  
Musgrave: Yeah, especially things like the state of the IUS when we turned it loose. In other words, how we can (garble).  
  
CapCom: Story, of course we’ll be looking into exactly what happened. We don’t really have a story there for you.

————

RIGHT ON THE TIMELINE  
  
Flight Day 2 in space sent all four astronauts from one console to the next flicking switches, pressing buttons and taking pictures. As part of a program of rendezvous simulations for the Solar Max satellite rescue mission the following year, Paul Weitz and Karol Bobko were scheduled to perform a sequence of burns using the RCS and OMS engines.  A little more than one day into the mission, the PAO explained, “The first maneuver is a Reaction Control System burn at one day, 44 minutes, 28 seconds. That’s about twenty-three and a half minutes from now.  – Three feet per second of change in velocity, a burn time of ten seconds, predicted resulting orbit of 177 by 153 nautical miles. That will be followed at (one day), one hour, 30 minutes, 46 seconds with a burn of both OMS engines for the duration of 23 seconds, a delta-V of 43 feet per second, resulting orbit of 153 by 152 nautical miles. Challenger’s current orbit is 177 by 154 nautical miles and the orbital period is one hour, 30 minutes, 48 seconds.”   
  
The OMS-4 maneuver took place as planned shortly before 2:01 p.m. CST and Challenger’s orbit was circularized at 153 nautical miles, “which is just about where we planned it to be,” Flight Director Gary Coen said. “A summary of today’s activities so far,” he told reporters at the 6:00 p.m. change-of-shift briefing, “would be that we’re right on the timeline; in fact today we were periodically a little bit ahead of the timeline.”  
  
During the course of the day, the astronauts successfully activated the Monodisperse Latex Reactor, which was designed to produce perfect latex spheres for medical and industrial precision measurements, conducted experiments on the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System, and performed first NOSL lightning observations. And in the afternoon, during a live TV downlink over the Hawaii tracking station, Challenger Pilot Karol Bobko could be seen activating and describing the GAS and NOSL experiments.

Bobko:.....What you see now, of course, is where we launched the TDRS and IUS from yesterday. And the canister is on the right-hand side, and I’ll bring you a picture over so you can get these on your screen. There are three of them. There is the Japanese canister, which is investigating the production of snowflakes in orbit. And then the Park Seed Company canister, which is going to be looking at the space environment’s effect on seeds… The middle one is from the Air Force Academy, and that has a dozen different experiments on it; there’s a metal beam joiner, where they’re going to try to join metals in space (garble), crystal purification, a microorganism development, and a electroplating experiment. The cadets at the Air Force Academy took some time to get ready for this flight on the shuttle. I show you how we turn them on. I’ll bring you back into the cabin here…  
  
CapCom: We got people down here waving _“Go Falcons”_ flags.  
  
Bobko: When you get back in the cabin, you might be able to see the one I have up here.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we’ve got a good picture in the cabin now; and we’ve got about five more minutes left here.  
  
Bobko: Okay. This is a little encoder which is used to turn on the GAS experiments. It’s a common encoder and it’s used for all the GAS experiments. But there’s a code which is used to address each. The Air Force Academy experiment has two relays in it, and I’ll call up the first and turn it on. Shows now that it is off and I’m going to turn it on.  
  
CapCom: Don’t make any mistakes.  
  
Bobko: And 0-0 does show that it is hot now, so it should be running.  
  
CapCom: That’s good news.  
  
Bobko: And 0-1 shows that it’s switched from latent to hot, so it should be running at this time as well.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy.

Bobko: It looks like those GAS canisters are in fact up and running. I hope they get good results on them. I think it’s a great opportunity for a lot of people, and especially for the students to be able to look at the environment of space and see how it affects all sorts of different items. As long as I’ve gotten the GAS canisters turned on, if we’ve still got a couple more minutes, I can show you another small experiment we have onboard, and that is the NOSL experiment.  
  
CapCom: We’re all standing by; we’ve got about three more minutes.  
  
Bobko: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And we’ve got a good picture.  
  
Bobko: Okay. NOSL is a rather simple experiment. It’s an experiment to take photographs of thunderstorms and lightning from the advantage we have here in space. And what it consists of is a detector which will detect the electrical lightning activity, and just a normal 16mm camera that has been used in many kinds of test programs before. When we go over places like Central Africa or South America, where there are likely to be the thunderstorms at this time of year, we point the cameras and take pictures. We also have, associated with this, recorders, so we can record our comments. People are very interested in this because they can see how lightning propagates from one thunderstorm to another, or may encompass a whole area. Something that’s very difficult to appreciate from the ground, even from a high point in the aircraft. We took a view this morning over Africa; there will be more as the mission goes on. We’ve got a limited number of passes and, you know, it’s not always easy to find the thunderstorms when you want them. But we’ve seen some lightning as we’ve been flying around. I think we should be able to get some good NOSL photographs on this flight.  
  
CapCom: That sounds good, Bo, and we appreciate the explanation of your experiments.  
  
Bobko: Yes, sir.  
  
CapCom: I’ve got one switch you can flip back there for us while you’re back in that area, on R12. We need you to switch supply H2O tank bravo inlet to the open position.  
  
Bobko: Stand by while I tie the NOSL camera down.  
  
CapCom: Alright. We’ve got about a minute and a half left. We’ve got a good look at the GAS canisters now in the payload bay.  
  
Bobko: Okay, what switch please?  
  
CapCom: Okay, on R12 the supply H2O tank bravo inlet, we need to get that open… and assure that talkback open.  
  
Bobko: Okay, tank bravo inlet is open and talkback is open.  
  
CapCom: Thank you, sir. We’ve got about 40 more seconds to go. Thanks for the excellent TV coverage.

———-

THE SLEEP OF THE JUST  
  
Winding down the day’s activities, the astronauts began preparing their dinner at about 9:15 p.m. CST, while Challenger was nearing the midway point on orbit 23 over Hawaii. Apart from minor technical issues, the orbiter continued to behave virtually perfectly. And Mission Control once more assured the astronauts that neither they, nor their spaceship were to blame for the IUS/TDRS trouble. “The spacecraft communicator passed to the crew congratulations on deploying the TDRS satellite,” the PAO explained, “apparently to head off any worries by the crew that perhaps their deployment procedure had something to do with the malfunction of upper stage. And he assured them that it was an upper stage failure and had nothing to do with the deployment. Meanwhile, the flight control team here is watching some playbacks of onboard television that they had not had the opportunity to see before.”  
  
So, shortly after 11:20 p.m. CST, Flight Day 2 officially came to an end and the crew of Challenger turned in to sleep the sleep of the just once more.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re about 30 seconds to LOS. The Crystal Team will be signing off for the evening; the Amber boys will get you in the morning at nominal wakeup time.  
  
Weitz: Okay, this will be the last time we’ll be hearing from you then?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm. We’ll be standing by. Have a good sleep.  
  
Weitz: Thanks a lot… you too.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, one last note – your onboard vector is good until tomorrow.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, Loss of Signal at Guam, probably the last voice conversation between the control center and the crew of Challenger for the evening, as the crew prepares their pre-sleep activities, wrapping up the day’s work. And unless we’re whelmed over with needs by the news media for a change-of-shift briefing at 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning it likely won’t have one with off-going Flight Director Harold Draughon. At one day, 10 hours 54 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
A few minutes later Steve Nesbitt again went on the air… and nobody seemed to be too enthusiastic about holding an early morning briefing. “This is Mission Control Houston. The crew onboard Challenger is preparing for their sleep period beginning in less than an hour, midway through orbit number 24. Any newsmen that really insist on a Flight Director press conference on a fairly non-eventful nine-hour shift need to let us know they’re alive and awake by calling the newsroom to insist on that press conference. Otherwise we’re certainly considering on not having it at 2:00 a.m. At one day 11 hours into the maiden flight of the orbiter Challenger, this is Mission Control Houston.” – A short while later the early-morning press briefing was officially cancelled.  
  
More than two hours later there was another PAO update: “This is Mission Control, Houston, one day, 13 hours 17 minutes Mission Elapsed Time; the orbiter Challenger is just about to cross the Equator, beginning orbit number 26. It is currently within range of the tracking station at Ascension Island. The crew is in their scheduled sleep period, although recent indications at a pass over Santiago are that they had some of the CRT displays on, as the spacecraft passed over Santiago, and data was returned to the ground automatically. Flight controllers here in Mission Control observe that all systems appear to be in good shape on the spacecraft. We just recently had a handover between the two flight control teams. Flight Director Randy Stone is now onboard with the Amber Team. Challenger is in a 153 by 152 nautical mile orbit, has a good vector and all systems seem to be in good shape tonight. We’re expecting a fairly quiet night. At one day, 13 hours 18 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control.”


	21. STS-6:flight day 3

**Wednesday, April 6, 1983 (Flight Day 3) – The Geritol Gang’s Victory Roll**  
  
SLEEP SHIFT  
  
“Well, I think they’re going to have to rename my planning team the sleep shift,” Flight Director Randy Stone would say during the 10:00 a.m. CST change-of-shift briefing, “just because we haven’t had a lot to do. Fortunately, the orbiter is still performing extremely well.”  
  
And indeed all was quiet during the night. 4:00 a.m. CST – “Challenger is in its 27th orbit; everything continues to be very quiet here at Mission Control this evening. Flight planners have made a few updates to tomorrow’s activities for the crew, and the astronauts have about four and a half hours remaining in their scheduled sleep period.”  
  
“We were able to accomplish all of our objectives yesterday by the flight plan and when that is done, the planning team has very little to do as far as planning the next day’s activity,” said Stone. “I can tell you now that the flight plan will be executed today as written. We moved a couple of items around by a few minutes just to make things a little bit more convenient.”  
  
7:46 a.m. CST – “Shuttle orbiter Challenger about to start orbit number 30 out over the Pacific Ocean at the present time. The crew has about 45 minutes in their scheduled sleep period remaining. And it’s about another twelve minutes before we get to see data again as the spacecraft passes over some of the tracking stations based in the Continental United States.” – 8:17 a.m. CST: “Orbiter Challenger is about to pass out of range at the Madrid tracking station on orbit number 30. Indications coming back from the spacecraft by way of the data being relayed to the ground that the crew is awake. There are only a few minutes remaining in their scheduled sleep period. We’ll probably hear the wakeup music when they pass over the Indian Ocean Station in about 11 minutes.”  
  
Paul Weitz and his crew beat the early morning call from Houston by a full hour, the time being usefully spent tidying the orbiter and preparing the morning’s first task: firing the Challenger’s Reaction Control System motors during Rendezvous Phasing Maneuver RPM-3. “It’s just a tweak maneuver to get us in the right position for the rendezvous DTO that’s in progress,” said planning shift Flight Director Randy Stone.  
  
Describing the schedule for Flight Day 3, Stone continued, “Later on today we have several NOSL opportunities scheduled. The NOSL is the photographic equipment to look at lightning in the upper atmosphere. We have CFES scheduled again today to do the runs 4, 5 and 6. We did 1, 2 and 3 yesterday and that was totally successful at least from the standpoint as we can tell until we get the samples back on Earth.”  
  
“We have the FCS checkout scheduled this afternoon,” he said, “and that is just a standard practice that we have where we go in and check the entry landing aides and the control system prior to entry. It’s scheduled on Flight Day 3 because it was just a convenient time in the flight to do it. We do it primarily to assure ourselves that all of the hardware wasn’t disturbed by the shake, rattle and roll of ascent.”  
  
“We also have a hot fire scheduled this afternoon of the RCS jets that we don’t normally fire on orbit,” Randy Stone explained. “We do this primarily on this flight because it’s a new vehicle. We have done it several times on the orbiter Columbia, and it’s just to check out the jets that just normally aren’t fired in the day-to-day activity on orbit.”  
  
And also preparations for Thursday’s spacewalk would continue, Stone said. “This afternoon Story and Don Peterson will be performing the rest of the EMU checkout in preparation for the EVA. As you know, we had already accomplished the checkout on the backup suit and everything on that suit looks good. And today they’ll be doing the two primary suits. They’ve got a little relief in the timeline, if they run into any problems, because of the work Story did the night of Flight Day 1.”

———-

CapCom (Mary Cleave): Morning, Challenger. This is Houston. How do you read?  
  
Weitz: Read you loud and clear, Houston. How me?  
  
CapCom: Loud and clear.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, one day, 20 hours 7 minutes (8:37 a.m. CST). That wakeup music played to the crew was “Teach me Tiger” by April Stevens… Still within range of the Indian Ocean tracking station for about another minute… This is Mission Control Houston.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, this is Houston. We’re thirty seconds LOS, talk to you again over Yarragadee at 20:16.  
  
Weitz: Okay, see you then.

————

WILD AND WOOLY  
  
8:54 a.m. CST – “The orbiter Challenger is passing out of range of the Yarragadee tracking station, about to enter the range of the Orroral tracking station. We may or may not have communication at that time. The people working with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite had asked for use of that station. During that last pass Commander Paul Weitz was discussing with the ground their observation of the extra inputs or perhaps high level inputs for very brief periods of time of the pressure regulating system in the cabin for the oxygen and nitrogen. Everything is within normal limits, but there were for very-minute periods of time higher than normal flows and these appear to be associated either with the pre-sleep periods or post-sleep activities. They are observing that right now to see if they can correlate, make any associations between those periods of time and these somewhat abnormal flows of the oxygen and nitrogen pressure regulating systems.”  
  
Flight Director Randy Stone explained about one hour later, “You may have heard right before we went to bed last night the control Center at least talking about a high O2 flow alarm that we got in the cockpit. It’s something that we saw last night in pre-sleep and the night before in pre-sleep. It’s a regulator that comes open to replenish the oxygen in the cabin. We’re not exactly what the phenomenon is that’s causing it. It is… it’s really just an annoyance at this time. It’s not a real problem.”  
  
“The cabin integrity on this ship is extremely tight, almost no leak down that we can detect,” Stone said. “That’s just so you don’t get worried hearing things like high O2 flow and things like that. This morning right at crew wakeup, we had a report over a UHF station that the crew had a high N2 flow alarm. It did not stop. The crew reported that the area where the orifice that allows the nitrogen to come into the cabin is located , that they could feel considerable flow coming into the area. We secured the pressure control system at that time to stop the nitrogen flow into the cabin and we’re evaluating right now what caused that flow.”  
  
“It is no problem,” Randy Stone continued, “even if the automatic system has some problem that keeps us from leaving it online in an automatic mode; we can manually manage the cabin once or twice a day replenishing the nitrogen and oxygen. So, it’s really a non-problem from a serious standpoint, but I wanted everybody to know that it was going on and the teams today will be working to determine what caused it and hopefully we can get back on the automatic control system for the pressure control of the cabin. As I said, the Challenger has been operating flawlessly. We don’t consider the flow alarms that we’ve had to be any problems at all, and I keep hoping that the planning shifts stay the sleep shift. It’s very easy just to babysit this vehicle when it’s working so well.”  
  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control, Bermuda has Loss of Signal. Challenger is maneuvering to the attitude for the third Rendezvous Phasing Maneuver, the third maneuver in this phantom rendezvous series that they conducted over a several day period. The ignition time for this burn… one day, 21 hours 15 minutes (9:45 a.m. CST). We’re about two minutes from that time. It will be a retrograde RCS burn, a delta-V of one foot per second, a burn time of three seconds. The resultant orbit expected to be 153 by 151; it will not perturb the orbit much from the current number. Dakar is the next station in two and a half minutes. At one day, 21 hours 13 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston… This is shuttle control at one day, 21 hours 15 minutes. Challenger is about twenty seconds away from acquisition through Dakar…  
  
CapCom (Bryan O’Connor): Challenger, Houston, with you at Dakar for seven minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, stand by, Bryan… And the residuals were minus .12, minus .01 and plus .13.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy.  
  
Weitz: Okay, Houston, we’re working a problem right now. We… for your information, on the water supply system in the cabin, we have already hooked up the water hose that was stowed in the window shade holder, and have been using that for utility purposes. And now Don and Story just discovered, just a few minutes ago, we’re not getting water out of the dispenser anymore; but we are getting it out of that hose. So, it may be a plugged needle and we’ll go ahead and change out the needle and see if that helps it any. We’ll keep you posted.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy.  
  
Weitz: And verify you want us to go back to ZLV now, Bryan.  
  
CapCom: Stand by for attitude information. We’re talking about whether or not to send you to IMU align now or the ZLV.  
  
Weitz: Okay. We’ll just sit here and drift.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, recommend you go ahead and go to the IMU align attitude as per the CAP, page 439.  
  
Weitz: Okay, we’ll do that. Thank you.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston.  
  
Weitz: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We’re still trying to put together this N2 message that we got earlier over Yarragadee. Could you tell us what it was that stopped the N2 flow out of the WCS?  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir, when I moved cabin 14.7 cabin reg bravo to off.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy.  
  
Weitz: Old Story was trying to brush his hair; that stuff coming out of that panel kept blowing the brush right out of his hand.  
  
CapCom: Roger. I guess that didn’t make much difference, did it?  
  
Weitz: Well, he looks wild and wooly.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston… P.J., we’ve been looking at this UHF noise problem and how’s it been sounding on this pass?  
  
Weitz: It’s been good on this pass, Bryan. I’d forgotten about it till you just asked about it.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
  
Flight Director Gary Coen explained during the late-afternoon change-of-shift briefing, “Early in the shift we had some ground problems with transmissions, UHF transmissions. The crew reported that when we talked there was a buzz and a high frequency noise from the ground. That was reported over two sites, and we have since cleared those problems.”  
  
  
Weitz: And just for your information, back on that nitrogen flow thing: It appeared to be a demand by the regulator that it sounded. I’ve never been there around that panel when the regulators are flowing max, but it sure sounded like it was to me, and it was really making a very loud noise and was flowing through the reg. And when I turned the reg off, as I say, then the flow stopped. And we’d had two master alarms before then with no indication that I could see on the flow meter up on the panel, on the N2 flow. So I don’t know when it started, or what’s happened.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy… Challenger, Houston, if you get a jet alarm L2D fuel, no action required... and we’re going LOS; we’ll see you at IOS at 21:35.  
  
Weitz: Okay, what’s wrong with the jet? Any quick words?  
  
CapCom: Roger. We see a slight temperature decrease on it.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: We’re looking at it. It might be a small leak.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control; Dakar has Loss of Signal. Indian Ocean Station is next in about ten and a half minutes. Continuing to troubleshoot the unexpected brief surges of oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin, trying to pinpoint what’s causing that… And just at LOS, the crew was advised that there may be a small leak in one of the RCS jets, the L2D jet. Seeing a slight decrease in temperature, which could trigger a master alarm aboard Challenger, they were advised to ignore the alarm. That jet will automatically deselect itself, if that is the case. At one day, 21 hours 25 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (9:55 a.m. CST), this is shuttle control Houston.  
  
  
Flight Director Gary Coen said, “We had a small leak through one of the down firing jets on the left RCS system. We have temperature transducers that indicate to us when we have a leak through one of the RCS jets. This particular one was jet L2D; it leaked fuel. What the temperature transducers are designed for, and what they do, is measure the temperature inside the injector of the jet. If fuel leaks through that injector, of course, the temperature goes down. The reason the temperature goes down is because the vacuum in space quickly dries out the fuel. The fuel, of course, is a liquid fuel and the temperature decreases and it tells us we have a leak.”  
  
“The automatic, the computers onboard sense these temperatures and when the temperature gets below a low limit, it quits using the jet. That occurred,” explained Coen, “on jet L2D this morning. The computer properly deselected the jet, quit using it. There are other down firing jets that control attitude. Subsequently that fuel leak quit leaking; the jet is now up to proper temperature.”  
  
“This afternoon we’re going to do a hot fire on that jet to make sure that it’s working properly,” he announced. “The hot fire’s normally planned so that’s nothing special either. The reason we do a hot fire is to check out all the jets at some time prior to entry. So there’s no real change to the plan. But we’re going to be interested to see if that jet shows the same characteristic.”

————

BUSY LIFE  
  
Once more the two decks of Challenger assumed the environment of both a busy office and a research laboratory. Don Peterson was working the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System down on the middeck. Paul Weitz was taking photographs of thunderstorms over the Gulf of Mexico. Story Musgrave, the eager EVA man, was checking out the spacesuits. And Karol Bobko interspersed scientific research experiments with periods of inflight exercise.   
  
PAO: This is shuttle control at one day, 22 hours 28 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (10:58 a.m. CST). Buckhorn will lock on to Challenger in about 30 seconds…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you over the States for twelve minutes. And we have a NOSL opportunity to talk to you about.  
  
Weitz: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. In about three or four minutes, when you are passing over the Gulf of Mexico, there’s a real good line of thunderstorms. You’ll see them on this pass and also on the next pass, orbit 33. We thought you’d like to know in case you can get up to that NOSL and take pictures.  
  
Weitz: Thank you.  
  
CapCom: Recommended speed for the camera would be 1/1000th and FSTOP 16.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston. In about ten seconds we’ll have a one-minute keyhole. I’ll check back in.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston. We’re back with you at MILA.  
  
Peterson: Okay, Houston. We’re just trying our CFES.  
  
CapCom: Roger, understand.  
  
Weitz: And Houston, it’s pretty cloudy. I don’t recognize anything here. Can you tell me about where we are… in relationship to that line of storms?  
  
CapCom: Stand by; we’ll give you a mark… And Challenger, Houston, you have just entered the Gulf of Mexico area and you can start filming anytime now… Challenger, Houston, right now you’re just south of the New Orleans area…  
  
Musgrave: Houston, MS1.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead.  
  
Musgrave: Bryan, you got any water dump numbers for me?  
  
CapCom: Roger, we’d like you to dump tank bravo to 35 percent.  
  
Musgrave: Bravo to 35… and when I tried to fill some air sample bottle, sample number 3, the bottle was not evacuated. I heard no air blowing into the bottle. I tried number 4 and it was not evacuated either.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy.  
  
Musgrave: And I did have the caps off the nozzles.  
  
CapCom: Roger, understand, Story.  
  
Musgrave: CO2 absorber replacements have been done.  
  
CapCom: Roger… And Challenger, Houston, we’ve got a question about the WCS filter yesterday afternoon when you are ready.  
  
Musgrave: You know, I don’t think we looked at the WCS filter yesterday. I don’t think we did either.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Well, we were just wondering about it judging by the debris we saw on the TV floating around the cabin and the fact that the fan filters had so much junk on them. We were wondering, when you get around to looking at that WCS filter, what you see on it.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. It’ll take us a while.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, if you can’t see the ground, we see you over the east coast of Florida now, and that’s the end of the NOSL opportunity.  
  
Weitz: I did see the ground myself from about the point where we asked you, which was just a little… a little west of New Orleans along the Gulf Coast until after Florida.  
  
CapCom: Okay, very good… Challenger, Houston, we see the supply water crossover valve open. Recommend we… that you go ahead and close that. We don’t need that for the water dump.  
  
Musgrave: I got it.  
  
CapCom: Roger… Challenger, Houston, about to go LOS; we’ll see you at Dakar at 22:50.  
  
Peterson: Okay, Bryan, and I just activated the CFES. I changed the address 1550 to all calls, and when I did I got an operator call and an out of range. And I think that goes with changing the pump speed, but you might have them check it.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we’ll check.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control; Bermuda has Loss of Signal…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, that operator call out of range is expected on that change.  
  
Peterson: Roger, just what I figured.  
  
PAO: Now Bermuda has LOS. Mission Specialist Don Peterson activating the continuous flow on the electrophoresis experiment as Challenger went LOS at Bermuda. And the optical survey of lightning experiment was conducted over a good part of the Gulf of Mexico during this pass… a line of thunderstorms in the Gulf today. Dakar is next in about a minute and 50 seconds; we’ll stand by for Dakar at one day, 22 hours 49 minutes Mission Elapsed Time.

————-

Almost two days into the mission, at 12:22 p.m. CST, ending a long 18-minute LOS period  since coming out of range at Yarragadee and just passing by Orroral during this orbit, Challenger was approaching acquisition through Hawaii. Donald Peterson was busy operating the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you at Hawaii for seven minutes.  
  
Peterson: Okay, Bryan, and on the CFES… When the sample 4 first started airing it looked like the stream was going to diffuse pretty badly. But after a couple of minutes, it settled down and it’s making a really clean, well defined stream all the way up to the column now. I’m just about ready to take some pictures.  
  
CapCom: Well, that’s great news, Don.  
  
  
“The electrophoresis technique worked by passing an electric field through a fluid as it moved from one end of a processing chamber to the other,” describes British space author Ben Evans. “Akin to a prism splitting white light into its constituent colors, the 1.8 meter tall CFES device – situated on Challenger’s middeck – had the ability to separate cells and proteins, but its effectiveness on Earth was limited by gravity-induced effects of convection and sedimentation.”  
  
“On STS-6,” he continues, “during a pair of seven-hour-long experiment runs, CFES processed more biological material than was achievable in operations on Earth. Moreover, their purity was some four times higher.” The CFES was first flown aboard Columbia STS-4 in the summer of 1982. According to Ben Evans “significant improvements, including software changes, better cooling and greater separation capability, had been implemented during the interval between STS-4 and STS-6.”  
  
“Samples of rat and egg albumin and cell culture fluid had been successfully separated during STS-4,” says Evans. During mission STS-6 high concentrations of haemoglobin were tended to evaluate its flow profile in weightlessness. Musgrave and Peterson “also monitored a mixture of haemoglobin and polysaccharide to investigate the separation of different molecular configurations.”  
  
Flight Director Gary Coen, on the evening of Flight Day 3, reported, “We have completed the CFES activities. The CFES folks, the experimentators, say they are very happy with what they’ve gotten.” According to Ben Evans “each sample was satisfactorily processed, although post-flight removal indicated that the refrigerator had been inadvertently turned off. The condition of the samples, nonetheless, was considered ‘acceptable.’”  
  
The active portion of the Monodisperse Latex Reactor middeck experiment was also concluded on Flight Day 3; there was only one additional MLR stirring operation planned, which would commence prior entry. According to Ben Evans MLR was intended “to study the kinetics involved in the production of uniformly sized latex beads in the microgravity environment. The result of this experiment would subsequently find their way into world markets, with hundreds of adverts selling ‘made in space’ particulate spheres from the MLR. The tiny beads – invisible to the naked eye – were processed in four small reactors, each of which contained a chemical latex-forming recipe. In orbit, the experiment was heated to 70 degrees Celsius, which initiated the chemical reactions leading to the formation of larger beads.”  
  
“Despite initial success in producing five-micron-sized beads on Columbia’s STS-3 mission in March 1982, the reactor’s next flight in June malfunctioned and processing was not completed,” explains Evans. “During STS-6, three reactors operated satisfactorily, with the final one not performing to completion; consequently, not all of its beads were produced. However, particles in the ten-micron size range were achieved. It was hoped such ‘monodispersed’ beads could lead to medical and industrial benefits, for example by measuring the size of pores in the walls of intestines for cancer research, assisting in glaucoma research and transporting drugs for the treatment of tumors.”

———-

SOME NEW CLOTHING  
  
Musgrave: I’m into the EMU checkout.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Musgrave: If you can get Armstrong, O’Neil, EMU and those folks in pretty soon. I’m finished in this area (garble) ops totally on Day 1 as you remember.  
  
CapCom: Roger, remember that… Challenger, Houston, Story, we’re calling the EMU guys to come on over here and they’ll be available in a few minutes to answer any questions, or to ask you some questions as time goes on.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. It’s mostly configuration stuff.  
  
CapCom: Roger… Challenger, Houston, twenty seconds to LOS; we’ll see you over the States in about three minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Say again, Bryan.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We’re going LOS and we’ll see you over the States in three minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Alright.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control; Hawaii has Loss of Signal. Buckhorn will pick up Challenger in about two and a half minutes… Story Musgrave reporting over Hawaii that he was starting the EMU checkout, the spacesuit checkout… He’s about five and a half hours early with that operation. We’ll stand by for this pass over the Continental United States on orbit number 33.  
  
  
“Although somewhat different from the ensembles worn on previous Gemini and Apollo missions, they were designed with the same objective in mind: to leave the pressurized confinement of a spacecraft,” Ben Evans’ book _Space Shuttle Challenger – Ten Journeys into the Unknown_ describes the “complex, tumultuous and near-tragic developmental history” of the EMUs:  
  
“’We had ten major replans,’ remembered Joe McCann, NASA’s former EVA life-support systems manager, of its genesis. ‘The problems started pretty early with the upper torso and putting pivots in that, because story couldn’t get through it. He couldn’t don the thing, because his elbows couldn’t get close enough together, so we ended up putting gimbals and bellows on the suit to allow him to get in and be able to operate. That was a significant technical challenge to get that done, but it remained a key worry point because we had these pivots buried in fiberglass and cases of them loosening up after a while. If they blew out, you’d blow the bellows and be pretty hurt! We got some early warnings of that happening in the WETF.’

Musgrave: Bryan, the bag is designed to cover the third EMU. I can’t get it on, I can’t uncover the primary and secondary ways to open with that bag, no matter how hard I try, it just won’t do it.   
CapCom: Roger, we’ll talk about it here… Challenger, Houston, for Story….  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We understand there was also a problem in one-g getting that bag on there. If you could just secure it on there the best you can, it’s not a big deal.  
  
Musgrave: the only reason I was concerned was I know there’s active LiOH cartridge in there, and I wanted to seal off the neck ring (garble). But there’s no way to do it.  
  
CapCom: Roger… Challenger, Houston, for Story…  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: And Story, we were not aware that there is an active LiOH cartridge in there, unless you put one in there.  
  
Musgrave: Yes, you have to put one in there for the (garble) EMU ops. And I called down the serial number last night.  
  
CapCom: Okay.   
  
Musgrave: As you know, that check requires buttoning the whole thing up, putting an LCC in there and doing the pressurization check 1.6 to 4.3 and checking the fan also with which was good.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
  
Talking about Story Musgrave’s problem getting the cover over the spare EMU, Flight Director Gary Coen explained, “There is a cover on it that is used to keep the arms from flopping during entry. I understand, or have been told, that it is particularly difficult to get that cover back on. And that’s not a mission impact, although I guess the arms will be waving during entry.”  
  
  
Weitz: Houston, Challenger.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead.  
  
Weitz: Okay, you got that buzz back in the UHF I think. Bryan, give me a short count, will you please?  
  
CapCom: Roger, short count follows… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5…  
  
Weitz: That’s good.  
  
CapCom: 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…  
  
Weitz: Yeah, it’s back again when you transmit. Looks like a pretty day in Florida. Interestingly it’s a nice sunny day and you see the land very clearly; about the only runway you can’t see is the shuttle landing strip.  
  
CapCom: Roger that.

About 12:53 p.m. CST – “This is shuttle control. Challenger has flown beyond the range of Bermuda. Dakar is next in about four minutes. Story Musgrave reporting during this pass that he had unstowed the spare EMU, but is unable to get the upper hard torso into the bag that’s used after unstowing. He was told there’s been difficulty in doing that even in one-g and that it was no big deal, not to worry about it. And Paul Weitz reported noisy UHF reception when Challenger was over Florida, described the noise as a high pitch buzz. Dakar now about three minutes away; at two days, 24 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
An since they recently have had snowfall in White Sands, New Mexico, now – during the Ascension pass – there was talk about a Christmas tree. And the air-to-ground communication even got somewhat philosophical…  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, for anyone who is up near the aft facing windows or has looked out those windows recently. We’re wondering if that ice tree back on the APU pan on the starboard side of the fin is still there.  
  
Weitz: Well, let me look through the binocs, Bryan. It has gradually been desiccating over the last few days. Let me look… I think it’s gone, but let me make sure. Double meaning…  
  
CapCom: Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant.  
  
Weitz: So as long as you understand. That’s the main purpose of communication, right?  
  
CapCom: Roger. I was going to ask you to look at the window, not at the WCS.  
  
Weitz: Yeah, no, those three vents are all clean and I can now see the three stream vents there. The one that had the biggest Christmas tree was the most forward one… and, as I said before, the aft most one. The center one had one also and one at the base of the vertical fin where it gets fatter and it was kind of piled up like a snow drift against that part where it bulges out.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy.  
  
Weitz: But it’s all gone now, and I think we reported. But I’m not sure about that large amount of ice… icicles that were on the… around the lip of the center main engine nozzle. They were mostly gone, 90 percent of it at least by the evening of launch day.  
  
CapCom: Roger… Challenger, Houston, preferred APU for FCS checkout is APU 2.  
  
Weitz: Okay, APU 2.  
  
Peterson: And Bryan, just for the CFES guys’ information, I’m watching the flow as it progresses up the (garble) and up the column, and it’s about roughly half way up now. And it is extremely spread by the time it gets up there. It’s probably on the order of a half inch wide, or something on that order, and it looks like two separate towers of material now.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy. And we’re twenty seconds from LOS. We’ll see you at Botswana at 00 plus 43.  
  
Weitz: Roger dodger.   
  
PAO: This is shuttle control, Challenger out of range at Ascension Island, Botswana next in about four and a half minutes. Commander Paul Weitz reporting that the ice tree that was at the base of the vertical stabilizer is now gone. He was informed that Auxiliary Power Unit number 2 will be the one to be selected for operations during the Flight Control System checkout; it comes up later today. Don Peterson continuing the CFES work, and Story Musgrave, who had reached a point in his timeline where he had nothing to do, started preliminary portions of the EMU checkout, about five and a half hours early. We would expect though that the major portion of that checkout, including donning the suits, will occur at about the regular time which is two days, five hours 25 minutes, because that checkout at that time requires three crewmen – Bobko, Peterson and Musgrave. And Bobko and Peterson are occupied with other duties up until that time. Challenger two and a half minutes away from Botswana, at two days, 40 minutes Mission Elapsed Time; this is shuttle control Houston.  
  
  
1:20 p.m. CST – “Botswana has Loss of Signal, next acquisition through Yarragadee in eleven and a half minutes. Story Musgrave reporting just at LOS that he might want to check out the communication links on the EMU’s during the next Hawaii pass in about 30 minutes.” – 1:32 p.m. CST:   
  
  
CapCom (Roy Bridges): Challenger, Houston is with you at Yarragadee for six and a half minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, a note on the EMU comm. check question that Story had.  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger, Story, it appears to us that you can do this comm check at your convenience. We’d probably suggest that you do it over the Pacific prior to getting into the FCS checkout, if that’s convenient with all of you.  
  
Weitz: No, as a matter of fact, Roy, what we’d like to do is go ahead and start the FCS checkout now.

———

Talking about the Flight Control System checkout, Flight Director Gary Coen explained, “It’s a way to move the aerosurfaces on the vehicle to make sure that you’ve done a little bit of a dynamic checkout of the rudders, body flaps, and what not. It also, as part of the flight control checkout, is the checkout of the avionics equipment and the sensors and the navigation gear that’s used for entry.”  
  
  
Bobko: Both (garble) on the headsets, Roy… Houston, Challenger, you ready to copy the elevon positions?  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Bobko: Well, they haven’t changed since launch day. It looks like the outboards are up… as near as we can tell ten degrees, and inboards down five to ten degrees. But like I say, the significant thing to me anyway is, as far as we can tell, they have not changed in the last two days or so.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy… Challenger, Houston… P.J., concerning when to start the FCS checkout… What we would prefer is that you do the APU prestart and be ready at Hawaii AOS for us to give you a go for the APU start.  
  
Weitz: Okay, that will be fine… We’re in work now on page 7-8 orbit ops checklist.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Musgrave: Houston, MS1.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead.  
  
Musgrave: Spare EMU ops are complete, the EMU checkout was complete to the comm check on flight supplement 7, and I’ll leave it here for now until we both get involved.  
  
CapCom: Roger… Challenger, Houston, we’re 30 seconds to LOS; we’ll see you at Hawaii at 1:28.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle control, Challenger out of range with Yarragadee; next acquisition through Hawaii in 17 minutes. Story Musgrave advising Mission Control that he has terminated his EMU checkout activities, having accomplished all that one person can, and that he will now wait until Don Peterson is available so that both of them can continue with the checkout. Paul Weitz and Bo Bobko getting set up and ready for Flight Control System checkout. They’ll be ready to power up before Hawaii acquisition, so that telemetry would be available to observe it. At two days, one hour 11 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is shuttle control Houston.  
  
  
At 1:56 p.m. CST, two days, one hour and 26 minutes into the mission, Hawaii had acquisition of Challenger. Astronauts Weitz and Bobko were ready to commence the FCS checkout – flapping the orbiter’s wings so to speak.  
  
  
CapCom (Bryan O’Connor): Challenger, Houston is with you through Hawaii for eight minutes.  
  
Bobko: Okay, we’re ready to start the APUs.  
  
CapCom: Roger, stand by.  
  
Bobko: _The_ APU that is… number 2.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Bobko: If you’d like, I can open the fuel tank valve…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, you have a go for APU start.  
  
Bobko: Okay, it’s in work… gray talkback…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, APU looks good.  
  
Bobko: Flash evap is off now.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Peterson: And Bryan, when you get a chance, I’ve got a couple of more CFES items for you.  
  
CapCom: Roger, Don, stand by a second.  
  
Peterson: Okay.  
  
Weitz: (garble) drive started, Houston.  
  
CapCom: Copy.  
  
Weitz: Well, we did not, as you can probably see, get any down arrows.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy.  
  
Bobko: We feel like we’re ready for APU shutdown.  
  
CapCom: Roger, stand by… Challenger, Houston, you’re go for APU shutdown. That was a real good test.

————

The one-hour test of Challenger’s Flight Control System involved a brief power-up of one of the three APUs to provide enough hydraulic power to conduct a check on all aerodynamic control surfaces. Whilst Paul Weitz and Karol Bobko were busy, the two mission specialists turned on the TV cameras for a live broadcast of life in space for the American networks. – 2:25 p.m. CST: “Live television during this MILA pass of Commander Paul Weitz, on the left, and Pilot Bo Bobko conducting a portion of the Flight Control System check, and switched down to the middeck where Mission Specialist Don Peterson is operating the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System.”   
  
At 2:36 p.m. CST, as Challenger came into range of Ascension Island for the next six and a half minutes, Commander Weitz reported to the ground, “For your information, as near as I can tell out the window, Roy, the elevons are back to the position they were before.” Roy Bridges was able to confirm, “Yes, all of our data down here on FCS checkout part one really looks great. Of course, we’ll be getting some playback and continue to look at the part two awhile, but everything looks fairly good so far. No problems.”  
  
Flight Director Coen later summed the FCS checkout up, saying, “There were some minor problems there, mostly having to do with things that were slightly out of spec. As an example, we had a rudder reading that it was one percent out of spec. None of those things were felt to be significant.”   
  
During the post-flight press conference Paul Weitz commented on a photo showing the orbiter’s fin rudder offset to the left a little bit. “That kind of surprised me. It turns out in talking to folks afterward that the Flight Control System checkout leaves the rudder parked to the left and it’s nothing to be concerned about. That’s just what it does.”  
  
And there was good news on another front. CapCom Roy Bridges told the astronauts, “The TDRS team is still working on the details of their plan to boost their vehicle to geosync. However, they have done enough homework on that, that they think they have enough propellant to boost at their proper orbit and to conduct operations throughout the planned ten-year life. And the vehicle is in good shape right now.”  
  
He added, “And they don’t have a lot of thrust in their little rocket engines, so they will be performing the speedup over the next ten days to two weeks. So, we won’t know the end of the story until you guys get back; but everybody’s very encouraged down here.”  
  
   
WHAT’S UP, DOC?  
  
There was some concern among journalist listening to the air-to-ground communication when STS-6 Commander Paul Weitz asked for a PMC during the afternoon – a Private Medical Conference. Some were speculating that one or more of the astronauts may be suffering from space sickness, which potentially could call the scheduled spacewalk into question. The PMC was conducted by Flight Surgeon Tom Edward Lefton during the orbit 35 pass of the Hawaii tracking station. Of course, no details were released, but the word was that Dr. Lefton had determined there was no mission impact as a result of the PMC.   
  
So, for the remainder of the Hawaii pass, the astronauts even found some time to talk about… the weather! Paul Weitz said they were not able to spot the Hawaiian Islands due to a thick cloud cover. “How is the weather in Houston now?” – “Well,” CapCom Roy Bridges replied, “it’s been cloudy and cool today; we had a little drizzle this morning.” He added, “Generally the area between here and the Northrup Strip has been bad the last couple of days. We’ve had a very slow-moving storm over in the New Mexico-West Texas area that’s dumped quite a bit of snow on the ground.”  
  
  
Weitz: Snow?  
  
CapCom: Yes sir, in fact we had an accumulation at Northrup of one inch last night.  
  
Weitz: My goodness.  
  
  
Later that afternoon, during the Ascension pass beginning at 4:05 p.m. CST, CFES operations were officially declared finished – no additional test would be added; although Story “Just Do It” Musgrave seemed somewhat reluctant to give up on it….  
  
  
CapCom: And Story, one note for you.  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Preflight you discussed a supplemental CFES test with the experimenters and we would prefer to not do that test.  
  
Musgrave: You are talking about none for today or not at all?  
  
CapCom: We don’t want to do it during the flight.  
  
  
A short time later Flight Director Coen reported to the news media, “We have completed the CFES activities. The CFES folks, the experimentators, say they are very happy with the results and went out of their way to congratulate the crew on their performance on the experiment; and they are quite happy with what they’ve gotten.”  
  
4:30 p.m. CST – “Botswana has Loss of Signal, next acquisition: Guam in 24 minutes. A team handover will occur prior to Guam acquisition, Flight Director Gary Coen handing over to Flight Director Harold Draughon. The change-of-shift news conference with Flight Director Coen is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Room 135 at the JSC news center.”

CapCom (Jon McBride): Hello Challenger, you got the Crystal Team with you over Guam… Good afternoon, Challenger, Crystal Team with you over Guam for seven and a half minutes.  
  
Weitz: Hidi, where’ve you been?  
  
CapCom: We all went home and took a nap.  
  
Weitz: Well, here we are, rolling our little hearts out for you guys.  
  
CapCom: Yeah, we see that.  
  
  
The astronauts were literally doing that – performing an S-band antenna pattern test involving an x-axis roll maneuver by the orbiter. Challenger was rotating at two degrees per second, which meant one revolution every three minutes. The S-band antennas were alternatively blocked by the spacecraft, affecting the signal strength. And the Commander didn’t enjoy the world rolling by. “This ain’t the most comfortable attitude in the world. If the RCS folks can take a quick look at it and see if we can stop it between Guam and Hawaii, I’d appreciate it,” he said.  
  
  
CapCom: We’re looking at the CAP. It looks like you’re scheduled for a meal while you’re doing this thing, too.  
  
Weitz: I’m not sure anyone wants to try one while we’re doing it though.  
  
Musgrave: Yeah, we’re doing just that. Nice free ride down here.  
  
CapCom: Roger that… Okay, P.J., no problem in stopping the roll after Guam LOS; and that will be about 4:32, and be back in that roll attitude at 4:38 when we pick you up at Hawaii.  
  
  
As it turned out “folks decided they liked it so much they never did stop the roll,” as Weitz reported. That’s when Mission Control came up with an idea. “And P.J., how would you feel about giving us some live TV coverage on the next Hawaii pass. You’ll be doing sort of the same thing.” Weitz replied, “Oh, yes, you bet.” Jon McBride also advised the crew that the NOSL thunderstorm experiment might have some targets of opportunity over southern Brazil on the upcoming orbit 36 pass. At 5:58 p.m. CST, when Challenger got down to the Botswana tracking station, Weitz reported success on spotting lightning over Brazil.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, with you over Botswana for seven minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston. Think we got some lightning on that last pass. It was impossible to see a storm flash and get over there, so we would wait until we saw an area in front of us, just turn the camera on, and let the ground track carry the lightning storms through the field of view.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy that. Sometime before you go to sleep tonight, the NOSL folks would like a readout on how much film you’ve used.  
  
Weitz: Okay, I think three magazines.  
  
CapCom: Okay, confirm that sometime for us before you go to bed tonight.  
  
Weitz: Yes, alright.   
  
  
At 6:14 p.m. CST, while Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson were going off comm for a short while to get into their spacesuits for the upcoming dress rehearsal, Challenger left the range of the Indian Ocean Station en route to AOS at Guam seventeen minutes later. Paul Weitz and Karol Bobko were preparing for the second S-band antenna pattern test of the day. This time they were planning to turn on the television cameras for live views of the roll. Due to the blocking effects involved the TV signal was expected to come and go. At 6:38 p.m. CST, on the 37th orbit of her maiden voyage, the Challenger once again rose above the horizon over the Hawaiian Islands.

CapCom: And Challenger, we’ve got a good TV picture. We’ll be with you over Hawaii for about seven and a half minutes. Looks great.  
  
Bobko: Yes, looks good out the window, too. Don says, just to remind you, this is the Geritol gang’s version of a victory roll.  
  
CapCom: We copy. Sort of like a typical Air Force break too, isn’t it?  
  
Bobko: Yes sir, you bet. And Jon, the crewmen are in the suits without the helmets right now.  
  
CapCom: We copy. That’s a great picture, P.J.  
  
Weitz: Oh, you guys could get it further back than we can, can’t you… That’s a lot better.  
  
CapCom: That it is.  
  
Weitz: You can look at those two flaps on that starboard OMS pod when the sun shines on the bottom side up about now there, Jon. I guess they don’t show up too well.  
  
CapCom: it looks like we’re too far back here. Why don’t you explain to us about the wire there, the slide wire?  
  
Weitz: Yes, that’s the slide wire that runs down the side of the vehicle. There’s one on either side. Those are there for safety purposes until we demonstrate that we have a functioning system both in our procedures and in the equipment, that is the suits and mobility aids that we’re going to use. So that for each crewman, or crewwoman, as they go down the length of the vehicle – we typically go along the edge of the door there, the locks are on. And we have a safety tether on it, and this slide wire enables us to move with relative ease along, still maintaining this safety pivot to the vehicle without having to unhook it and hook it up.  
  
CapCom: Thank you, sir.  
  
Weitz: Sure thing. We can see, on the inside of the cargo bay there, the inside center portion of the vent doors that we use to control the pressure in the cargo bay during ascent and entry. And of course, the large canisters in the foreground are those Getaway Specials that Bo told you about yesterday.  
  
CapCom: Roger that.  
  
Weitz: The circular structure, which you haven’t seen much of there in the aft end of the cargo bay, is the Airborne Supporting Equipment, ASE, that was used to carry up the IUS, the Inertial Upper Stage, and the TDRS satellite. And this equipment will be going back to Boeing, to be used again very shortly, if not on STS-8, two flights from now.  
  
CapCom: And we copy that. And INCO is wondering… they want you to confirm that you cannot zoom back out.  
  
Weitz: Well, we try a lot. You want me to try on that camera?  
  
CapCom: Yes, why don’t you zoom it in and then see if you can bring it back out, and we’ll try it if you can’t.  
  
Weitz: Okay. We just had some thrusters, aft thrusters on the left pod firing.  
  
CapCom: I didn’t see it; maybe somebody else did.  
  
Weitz: Well, now it’s working okay, Jon. It’s just something that’s almost like a dirty or intermittent contact. We just had to play with it to get it to work.  
  
CapCom: Roger that.  
  
Weitz: And if you want to… I don’t know how well they show up in the color, right along with the wires, you can see the series of handrails that are yellow color, which go down along each (garble)… You got a double barrel blast there, one thruster in each pod firing this time… and you go hand over hand along those handrails that are colored yellow so that the EVA crewmen can distinguish them from the predominantly white parts of the vehicle. And back there you see one goes up from each camera crossing up and down and back up the other longeron.  
   
CapCom: Yes sir, we can see those very clearly. Next time over the top, if you got a chance, why don’t you pan down to the earth for us.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And we heard some comments that if it’s good tomorrow with the TV, it’s going to be real exciting for that EVA:  
  
Weitz: Oh, yes, we’re looking forward to it. And we need (garble).   
  
Musgrave: And Jon, would this be a good time to check EVA comm?  
  
CapCom: We would prefer that you do that LOS, Story.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And we’ve got about another minute and 39 seconds to go here at Hawaii. And just for your information, P.J., we’re losing the antenna lock while you’re over the top.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we’re starting to get video again. We’ve got forty seconds to go.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Looks like we can see the Big Island… Hawaii…  
  
Weitz: I don’t know, you probably see it better. That might be just clouds. There’s a fairly good look at the sun glare there; we’re just about looking into where the Sun reflects off the ocean. Folks are very interested in that phenomenon; we’ve been trying to get some good pictures for some people who are studying the many features surface and subsurface in the ocean by looking into the sun glitter.  
  
CapCom: That’s some great pictures there, P.J., thank you. We’re going LOS, and we’ll see you down at Botswana at 7:03.  
  
Weitz: (garble)  
  
CapCom: Thank you. See you in about 41 minutes.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, Loss of Signal at Hawaii; live television from the Challenger’s television cameras during the S-band antenna pattern test, in which the spacecraft was in a roll of some two degrees per second rate. And going over the top, the antennas were apparently blocked and caused loss of television downlink. It was described by the crew of Challenger as being the Geritol gang’s version of a victory roll. Next station in 40 minutes will be the Botswana relay station at the south end of the continent of Africa, at which time we shall return. This is Mission Control Houston, at two days, six hours, 24 minutes.

Story Musgrave had already been busy all afternoon checking out the Extravehicular Mobility Units. He experienced some minor problems when he was looking for and testing the twelve batteries for the spacesuit headlamps that were used when the orbiter traveled through the Earth's shadow. “Four did not work. I was not able to locate twelve, I located eleven batteries. Four out of the eleven didn’t work,” Musgrave said. “I cycled them at least ten times. The light will either come on bright on the first time or not at all.”  
  
Also, one of the straps used to hold down Musgrave’s cuff checklist was broken. “Now what they have is a set of procedures that are written up on a small little card and this card is strapped to his cuff,” explained Flight Director Gray Coen.   
  
Now, assisted by Pilot Karol Bobko, Musgrave and Peterson spent the evening conducting a complete dry run of every event leading up to depressurization and exit from the airlock. NASA had learned from STS-5 not to rush things and it paid off. The dress rehearsal the two main, as well as the spare EMU went smoothly. The pressure checks were good, as was the comm. check. And when Challenger came into range of Botswana at 7:33 p.m. CST, both mission specialists were already in the process of cleaning up after climbing out of the suits – way ahead of schedule.   
  
During the next pass over Hawaii, on orbit 38, more live TV pictures of Challenger’s payload bay rolling around the Earth’s horizon could be seen, but this time without crew involvement. Mission Control’s INCO Lee Briscoe was remotely controlling the cameras, doing the entire pan, tilt and zoom…  
  
  
CapCom: And we’ve got some good pictures, looking up the slide wire from the backend towards the forward there on the starboard side. And we can see the tilt table elevation numbers.  
  
Musgrave: You’re gonna see some additional stuff out there tomorrow.  
  
CapCom: You bet. And the picture is breaking up here a little bit right now because of the comm. checks we’re running during the roll… And Challenger, we’re trying to peek in the windows there at you, but it looks awfully dark inside.  
  
Musgrave: I’m glad you can’t see me right now.  
  
CapCom: Copy. We have switched to camera delta there on the forward part of the starboard side and we can see the tool box right at the bottom of our picture, and the GAS canisters. And we’re looking back to the backend of the pod side with the Earth rolling around behind you. We’re getting a good picture down the portside of the vehicle now from the aft camera and are looking in the area there around the tilt table you guys will be playing around in tomorrow.

8:30 p.m. CST – “Pretty good rehearsal for the EVA tomorrow, where the payload bay will have a population of two. Sixteen minutes away from Santiago, midway through orbit number 38 for Challenger; at day two, eight hours, this is Mission Control Houston.” – 8:53 p.m. CST: “Loss of Signal at Santiago, Indian Ocean Station in 25 minutes; the crew in their evening meal period, not very talkative, winding down the second day in space.” – 9:18 p.m. CST: “Indian Ocean Station in about 25 seconds; final pass of the evening for that station. We do have acquisition at this time.”  
  
  
CapCom (Guy Gardner): I’ve got a few pre-sleep notes, if you are ready to listen.  
  
Bobko: Do we have to copy these down?  
  
CapCom: Negative. The first one is to cancel the IMU alignment again tonight; looks like they are really looking good.  
  
Bobko: Roger, we copy that.  
  
CapCom: And with that in mind you can go ahead and go to your minus-ZLV nose-first attitude at your convenience; the attitudes are there in the CAP, at 9 plus 45.  
  
Bobko: Roger. P.J. said he already had a couple of alarms set to remind him to do the IMU align, so he’s not sure he wants to cancel it. But I think we can talk him into it. Okay, and ZLV anytime we like.  
  
CapCom: That’s right. Go into nose-first, as opposed to your nose-north you are now in. You should have a weather message coming up here at Indian Ocean as well, and we’re wondering if you had a final count on the number of NOSL film magazines you used.  
  
Bobko: Okay, Houston. We’re going to go nose-first now, so that at the window point of view it’s a whole lot better than nose-north attitude.  
  
CapCom: Understand. That’s fine with us.  
  
Bobko: We used three and a half NOSL magazines.  
  
  
9:24 p.m. CST – “LOS at Indian Ocean Station, Guam in 19 minutes. Spacecraft Communicator Guy Gardner passed up to the crew the information that the thrusting with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, hydrazine thrusters to get on up to geosynchronous orbit, will begin this coming Sunday after the crew has returned. Orbit 39 just beginning for Challenger.” – 9:42 p.m. CST: “The Flight Director here in Mission Control has asked his people to check all the systems for the final time here at Guam for the sleep period, all systems.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, I’ve got a brief summary of our forecast wether for Friday, Saturday and Sunday if you’re ready.  
  
Weitz: One moment… go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Looks like Edwards will be good for all three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Cape should be good for Friday and Saturday, but we’ve got a low over Northrup that’ll be passing through there on Friday and Saturday. So Northrup will be down Friday and Saturday, but should be good on Sunday. But the Cape should start going bad on Sunday due to that weather.  
  
Weitz: Roger. I copy.  
  
  
9:50 p.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Guam, final Hawaii pass starts in seven minutes. Spacecraft Communicator Guy Gardner gave the crew a nutshell of the weather outlook for Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the three stateside landing locations. Crew winding down the day’s activity preparing for a sleep period to begin in less than an hour.” – 10:01 p.m. CST: “LOS Hawaii for the final time this evening, Santiago in 21 minutes, which will likely be the final voice pass of the evening as the crew goes into their pre-sleep activities.” – 10:06 p.m. CST: “The handover from this team of flight controllers to the relieving team will begin at 11:30 Central  and be complete by 12:30, which means that off-going Flight Director Harold Draughon’s change-of-shift press conference would be around 1:00 a.m. Central Time, 2:00 a.m. Eastern Time. If there are any news people out there alive and awake who want to have a change-of-shift press conference, they should speak now or forever hold their peace. Otherwise we likely we will not hold one to an empty room.”   
  
Almost two days, ten hours into the maiden voyage of the orbiter Challenger, passing Santiago de Chile one final time for the day:  
  
  
CapCom: … and we’ve got about four minutes left in this pass, and after this we’ll leave you alone and let you get to sleep.  
  
Weitz: Wonderful!  
  
CapCom: One last switch, I hope. Down on MO10W, we’d like you to put the 14.7 cabin reg inlet system 2 to close.  
  
Weitz: Okay. Did you get that?  
  
Peterson: I’ll get it. That was 14.7, system 2 inlet to close, right?  
  
CapCom: Yes, 14.7 cabin reg inlet system 2 to close… Challenger, Houston, we’re thirty seconds to LOS. The Amber Team will be waking you up in the morning, and the Crystal Team will be back on for you for the EVA tomorrow.  
  
Weitz: Look for you then. Good night.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Good night.  
  
Weitz: Thanks a bunch.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, Loss of Signal at Santiago for the final pass of the evening. Crew now goes into an 11-hour sleep period, including pre-sleep preparations. And starting tomorrow, the two mission specialists will go into their EVA prep cycle and go out into the payload bay. Again, if there are any live newsmen, or awake newsmen… newspersons… newspeople out there, speak now or forever hold your peace, if you want a midnight or 1:00 a.m. press conference with the off-going Flight Director Harold Draughon. Day two, nine hours 59 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston.  
  
Weitz: Hi there.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Sorry to bother you; we’re seeing a high flow in PCS system 2; we’re wondering if you opened up the cabin reg again.  
  
Weitz: (garble) that’s a yes.  
  
CapCom: Sleep tight.  
  
PAO: Mission Control Houston, one final exchange there between the spacecraft communicator Guy Gardner and the crew aboard Challenger. It seems the EECOM here at Mission Control noticed a higher flow rate on telemetry of oxygen into the cabin. And like Big Brother was watching, it turns out the crew had turned the regulator on to boost the flow rate a bit higher. So, now they’re finally finishing up their day’s activity and settling in for eleven hours of sleep…  
  
  
Flight Director Gary Coen had explained earlier in the day, “We’re working up a manual procedure in the environmental system. On a few occasions we have had alerts, or alarms in the vehicle that indicate we’re flowing too much either sometimes oxygen, sometimes nitrogen. The time duration of these occurrences has been very small. We’ve had maybe two or three occurrences now. What we’re concerned about, there’s no concern at all for the performance of the system,… our only concern is that if we have one of these occurrences while the crew is asleep, that it might disturb their sleep. So we have today worked up procedures that manually configure the system such that while the crew is asleep, that we won’t get these nuisance alarms.”

———

During the Apollo program and thereabouts, we came to refer to the Earth as a blue planet,” STS-6 Commander Paul Weitz said after the mission, “and even during Skylab, which was ten relatively short years ago, I remember making a comment post-flight that the sky is blue, whether you look down through it or up through it, and it was a blue planet. Unfortunately, this world is fast becoming a gray planet.”  
  
“And it was frankly appalling to me to see how dirty the atmosphere is over nearly every part of the world that we had an opportunity to see. And that included some parts of the oceans where they’re close to the continents.”   
  
“Dick Underwood,” Weitz referred to astronaut photo coach Richard Weeden Underwood (1927 – 2011), “has looked at more photos, good photos taken from space than probably any other human being. And Dick says that he can tell the difference; he can show you pictures of the same area side by side over the last few years, in which our environment, apparently anyway is just flat going downhill.”  
  
“And I don’t know what the message is, but I think that it is not all related to dust storms and volcanoes, because it has a blue haze to it and looks to me like smoke,” Weitz concluded. “What’s the message? I don’t know, we’re fouling our nest some way.”   
  
At the end of Flight Day 3, Paul Weitz and Karol Bobko elected to spend a while at the windows and reflect as they watched the Earth roll by. It had been over twenty years since Bob White faced a host of unknowns as he flew the X-15 to the fringe of space, thirty-six years since Charles Yeager broke the sound barrier in the sleek X-1, and fifty years since Dr. Eugen Sanger first proposed the concept of a winged space plane. Now, over 170 miles above the Earth, the 100-ton Space Shuttle Challenger and her four-man crew were playing their own part in this story.   
  
High up, in the remote silence of space, it was difficult to imagine the troubles on Earth, but the evidence of man’s folly became only too clear as Challenger flew over the Middle East, where an enormous oil slick in the Persian Gulf blotted the crystal-blue sea. At the time - ever since September 1980 – a fierce war was raging down there between Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic of Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion forces. The “Tanker War” phase of this conflict was just around the corner – starting with Iraq’s attack on the oil terminal and tankers at Kharg Island in early 1984. That would add to the “usual” environmental damage caused by maritime traffic in the region. Looking down at this trouble spot on our beautiful Blue Planet, the astronauts watched the oil tanker spillage and tried to photograph it before returning to their sleep restraints.


	22. STS-6:flight day 4

**Thursday, April 7, 1983 (Flight Day 4) – Life on a Wire**  
  
“We accomplished the flight plan yesterday by the book,” Amber Team Flight Director Randy Stone told reporters during his 11:15 a.m. change-of-shift briefing. “Everything that was in the CAP, I believe, was accomplished on time or near on time. I came on shift last night after we put the crew to bed, and was greeted with another calm day of no replanning.”  
  
12:02 a.m. CST – “Challenger now passing over the ground station at Santiago, Chile, on its 41st orbit of the Earth, and downlinked data continues to affirm that onboard systems are performing nominally. The crew is just over an hour into its sleep period. About a minute remaining in this pass and the Mission Control team here is assuring Flight Director Randy Stone everything’s nominal aboard Challenger.” – 12:54 a.m. CST: “Challenger now passing over the tracking station at Guam, giving the flight control team the opportunity to look at some downlink data. Systems checks reveal nominal performance on Challenger; the vehicle is on its 41st orbit of the Earth, and just slightly more than six hours remaining in the sleep period.”  
  
“About an hour into the sleep period we had indications that the temperature on a water feedline to our Flash Evaporator System was going down,” Randy Stone describe the events leading up to a rude awakening, at least for Challenger’s Commander. “This is a line that is heated by some heaters to protect it from freezing when it’s not in use. The flash evap was not in use last night; there was no requirement for it. So we depend on these heaters to keep the water in those lines from freezing. We noted the temperature going down and expected that we were going to get an alarm shortly. We did get an alarm. It woke up the crew. It may not have been the entire crew; I wasn’t able to check it this morning. But the next AOS, P.J. was up on the loop to talk to us, to tell us he had the alarm, and ask our advice. Turns out that we had a heater fail off and we switched to the redundant system.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, how do you read? – Challenger, Challenger, Houston. – Challenger, Challenger, Houston. – Challenger, Challenger, Houston. – Challenger, Houston, in the blind; request FES feedline heater B supply to one.  
  
Weitz: Go, Houston.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we would like for you to get your FES feedline heater B supply to one. We have an apparent failure in the number two.  
  
Weitz: Yes, I saw that a while ago. It seemed to me, we switched away from one once before bedtime, I figured if it was important enough, you’d give us a call.  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm. We switched originally because one was maintaining a little high, but with two failing we do want to go back to one.  
  
  
“If you all go back through the notes,” explained Flight Director Stone, “you will find that we had switched off that system earlier in the flight because we had one heater that was cycling a little bit higher, a little bit higher temperature than was normal.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, at two days, 13 hours nine minutes (1:39 a.m. CST). That call to Challenger initiated at Santiago because data indicated failure of the heater which warms the feedline to the Flash Evaporator System. Planning Team EECOM Jerry Pleeger reported to the Flight Director Randy Stone that the downlink data indicated temperature was dropping to an extent which caused concern sufficient to warrant waking the crew and instructing them to transfer that heater, or switch from heater number two, which was apparently failed, to heater number one. Mission Commander Paul Weitz acknowledged that call and made the switch. And we’ll look forward to Acquisition of Signal at Dakar in about seven minutes to look again at the data and affirm that the heater change effective and see how the new temperatures look. At Mission Elapsed Time two days, 13 hours 11 minutes, this is Mission Control.  
  
  
1:55 a.m. CST – “Challenger is now over Dakar, downlink data coming from Challenger indicates all systems are performing nominally. The problem identified earlier by EECOM Jerry Pleeger is resolved. He has looked again at those temperatures during this Dakar pass and has observed that the line temperature to the Flash Evaporator System is rising again. Presently it’s up to 61 degrees; it had fallen to about 47, causing suspicion that the heater selected, heater number two, to the flash evaporator line had failed. Over the Santiago pass the crew was awakened and advised of the problem of heater failure and instructed to deselect heater number two and select heater number one. This Dakar pass verifies that the function has been performed and the temperature is coming back up.”  
  
Randy Stone told reporters, “After we selected back over to the original heater system, the temperatures went up to normal values and there was no chance of freezing that line. And the system has been operating normally ever since. And we never had to talk to P.J. again in the night, and we didn’t get any more alarms. We always have a deal going on the planning shift on who’s going to wake up the crew, and no planning team likes to wake up the crew. This was one we couldn’t avert. It was a failure and there was no way for us to change limits on the ground and prevent that alarm from going off.”  
  
6:17 a.m. CST – “Challenger on its 45th orbit of the Earth, about eight minutes away from Acquisition of Signal through the Bermuda station, which will be the first time in about an hour since we’ve been in contact with the vehicle and have had an opportunity to look at the downlink data. About 52 minutes remaining in the sleep period and the Mission Control team will also be looking to see if any of the crew are up and around and if any of the indicators onboard the vehicle suggest it. Maybe somebody has turned on CRTs or activated the galley, or done any of the other housekeeping activities associated with getting ready for the day. So we’ll look forward to a kind of advisory when we establish contact with Challenger in about seven minutes.”   
  
6:33 a.m. CST – “We’ve completed that pass over Bermuda. The Mission Control team has looked at the data, all stations report normal operations. Onboard Challenger no indications that the crew is awake or active at this point, 36 minutes remaining in the sleep period.”

CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re about 40 seconds to LOS here at Orroral and we’ll be with you next at MILA at 19:27.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, no downlink voice from Challenger during that pass, but the EECOM advises that his data shows the food warmers were turned on, that there’s some activity on the Cathode Ray Tubes onboard Challenger, and that the waste containment… waste management facility is being used onboard,  so the crew is clearly up and around. We will expect voice contact through MILA station in about 30 minutes. At Mission Elapsed Time two days, 18 hours 58 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
Shortly before 8:00 a.m. CST that morning, finally a voice came down from the sky…  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you through MILA and Bermuda for about eleven minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, Dick.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, I have a few notes to read to you to go along with your teleprinter messages this morning when you all are ready to copy.  
  
Musgrave: I’ll try to get you somebody… Go ahead, Dick.  
  
CapCom: Okay. The first one is relative to our PCS configuration. Prior to your EVA, we want to reestablish a nominal type system and put it in automatic control, and we would like for you to do that using orbit ops checklist page 5-6 with system two. And just some notes that you will still get the high N2/O2 flow and DPDT messages that occur nominally during airlock depress/repress.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And you all can go ahead at your convenience to reconfigure to that automatic control.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Okay. The second message is relative to the star tracker self test associated with the IMU alignment at 21:10. On that we want to just add the note that we would like for you to do the star tracker self test in the align attitude, and you do not have to be over a site to do that self test. Just do it on your own. We’ll evaluate the data post-flight.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Okay, the third note is for the water supply dump on page 458 of the CAP at 21:50. We want you to dump the B tank to 30 percent and that should take about 48 minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And I’ve got one other item, Story. And it’s relative to PRM ops (Pocket Radiation Meter, a neutron/proton dosimeter), and we just wanted to get a verification that data take two on the PRM ops was completed and we also like to get the start time of the PRM ops in the pre-sleep activity.  
  
Musgrave: The second part of that was not done last night, Dick, the PRM ops. We’re doing that this morning, right?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative, and that was just a reminder to you all to get that data take.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, now to P.J… The PRM is complete, Dick.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy, Story, and when you all get a chance we would like to know the start time, MET start time of that data take, or of step one for that action.  
  
Musgrave: We’ll get it to you.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy and we’re about 30 seconds to LOS here at Bermuda. We are without data at this time. We should have it back when we get to Dakar and we will be with you at Dakar at 19:43.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. And I’m working on page 2-2 of our EVA crew prep.  
  
Okay. We copy and we’ll stay with you.  
  
  
“We are without data at this time,” Dick Covey had told the crew. Well, the reason for that was actually a computer crash at Mission Control, as Flight Director Randy Stone explained to the news media a few hours later. “We had a building problem early this morning that I’m sure some of you have heard about. Let me briefly run over what it was. The Mission Operations Computer, the MOC, that processes the telemetry to our displays had some sort of software fault and stopped processing. It was over the first stateside pass after crew wakeup, so it was kind of a nuisance to us. There was really no real problem to us in operating the spacecraft. We still had S-band voice, UHF voice, all of our strip chart recorders still worked, and we could get selected readouts out of the incoming telemetry stream. We just lost the sophisticated data processing system that gives us our digital displays.”  
  
So, there was no reason to panic, and indeed, the astronauts kept talking about their RME Radiation Monitoring Equipment measurements and – again – the weather…  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you through Dakar for six minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston. Okay, you ready for some time on the PRM last night, Dick?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative. And be advised that we’re still negative data and probably won’t have any data on this Dakar pass.  
  
Weitz: Okay, we’ll try to manage. The PRM was… step one was at two days, ten hours even; step three was at two days, 19 hours 36 minutes.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy that. And with the completion of PRM ops, I have a note for you from the RME team. They want to thank all the crew for their outstanding performance during all of the PRM and HRM-III ops. (HRM-III was a gamma-ray counter.)  
  
Weitz: Well, I guess if all the procedures were as simple and instrumentation written as clearly, everything would be a piece of cake… Hey, what in heaven’s name kind of weather are they having out around El Paso?  
  
CapCom: Well, it’s the hundred-year weather, I guess. Supposedly they got ten inches of snow in El Paso yesterday. We heard that report and, of course, the weather is staying bad at Northrup all through today.  
  
Weitz: That’s not supposed to happen in April. It’s not snowing in Houston yet, is it?  
  
CapCom: Not yet, but it’s not very much like winter… or rather spring out there either.  
  
Weitz: I sure like to take a short pass back down the line, Dick. I’m truly impressed with the way this vehicle has performed. And I think it’s a real tribute to how much we’ve learned in the previous flights, and that Rockwell is learning how to build them, and the KSC is learning how to test them and launch them, and we’re learning how to operate them.  
  
CapCom: Well, we couldn’t agree more, P.J. Those of us here on the planning shift have certainly benefitted from the Challenger’s performance so far.  
  
Weitz: Yes, as have we all.  
  
PAO: This is Shuttle Mission Control at two days, 19 hours 47 minutes (8:17 a.m. CST). The MOC, Mission Operations Computer, here in Building 30 is temporarily down and the team is not receiving data accordingly. The Challenger crew is reading down times of activities for recording by hand. With the MOC down, the plot board presently is not working or updating the Challenger’s position. And there is no capability to record downlink data from the vehicle. Ground control officer expects the computer will be back online momentarily. This is Shuttle Mission Control.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, we’re 30 seconds to LOS here at Dakar. We’ll be with you next at Indian Ocean at about 20:02 and we’re still without data.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
  
“We were down for about nineteen minutes before we got the MOC reloaded with a new software mode and back up and operating. We lost about ten minutes of site coverage to this problem – five minutes, I believe, at Bermuda and MILA, and another five minutes at the next station,” said Randy Stone. “Ten minutes of real-time data. After that I requested that we bring up the dynamic standby computer that was scheduled to support the EVA just a few minutes early, so we didn’t have any more incidents like this during the EVA prep. And I know I’ve talked in one of the previous handover briefings about the dynamic standby computer that we bring up for every critical period. And this was just the time to bring it up. We brought it up a few minutes early since we had the MOC problem. There had been no more problem since I left the control center.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Shuttle Mission Control. MOC, the Mission Operations Computer in Building 30, is back online. And the control team is in the process of restoring the data displays and making sure the data absent from the two passes missed, those being Bermuda and Dakar, is not lost. The data was recorded at those stations and will be played back to the control center as soon as there is an opportunity to do so after these displays have been restored. We’ll have contact with the Indian Ocean Station in a few more minutes. Mission Elapsed Time two days, 19 hours 55 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.

The Extravehicular Activity planned for the afternoon hours was evidently eagerly looked forward to. During the next pass through Yarragadee, Commander Weitz called down and asked Mission Control if it would be alright, since they had stayed on the timeline so far and were getting ahead of schedule in some areas, if they could start the spacewalk early. “I feel that there’s no time constraint to getting on this EVA. If we just plod thoroughly and methodically through the checklist and you’re ready to go out early, I’m assuming that you guys will be amenable to giving us a go to do that.”   
  
“We told them that was fine with us,” said Amber Team Flight Director Randy Stone. The only constraint would be tracking site coverage, avoiding long LOS at the wrong time. “If they could get out an hour early, it would put it right over the States and we could have good TV of the egress out of the hatch.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Shuttle Mission Control. We will pick up signal again at Orroral momentarily. EVA systems officer Terry Neal has reported to the Flight Director that the crew appears to be well ahead of schedule as expected. They’re moving along on the EVA preps more gingerly than the timeline log for they appear to be about an hour ahead of schedule. If they maintain that pace, the EVA would probably occur one hour ahead of as it is timelined, which would put the Challenger over MILA ground station there and give us the opportunity to have downlink TV at the crew egress point. That again is pretty much later in the day, so…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, back with you through Orroral for three minutes.  
  
Weitz: Loud and clear.  
  
CapCom: Okay. And P.J., I’ve got some words for you relative to pressing on with the EVA activities.  
  
Weitz: (garble)  
  
CapCom: Okay. Looking at the site coverage, it appears that if you all can go about an hour earlier that we would have good TV coverage of the airlock egress. And if you all want to shoot for that as a goal, press on.  
  
Weitz: Okay, we’ll plod along and if we get ready to pre-breathe an hour early, we’ll go ahead and do so and let you know.  
  
CapCom: Okay, sounds like a good plan.  
  
  
9:01 a.m. CST – “It will be about 30 minutes before we establish contact with Challenger again through the ground station at MILA. Flight Director Harold Draughon and members of his Crystal flight control team have begun to arrive in the Mission Control Center and are now beginning to tag up and prepare for handover.” –9:55 a.m. CST: “Challenger passing out of range of the tracking station at Dakar on orbit 47, we’ll be reacquiring in about twelve minutes over the Indian Ocean Station. Report from the crew is that they are currently on the revised timeline in preparation for the EVA, Mission Specialists Peterson and Musgrave being in the airlock and hooking up their bioinstrumentation. Under the current schedule, they would be beginning, the crew would be beginning the pre-breathe; that is the mission specialists who will be doing the spacewalk, beginning their pre-breathe in a little under two hours from now.”

As the two soon-to-be spacewalkers continued preparing their gear, Challenger Pilot Karol Bokko – the designated spacewalk choreographer – assisted as best as he could in the operation. It was quite a long and complex process. It would take about an hour to set up all the pieces of gear, hook them together, getting into them and run the appropriate checks. And the astronauts kept attention to every detail, even inserting small fruit and nut food bars and water-filled drink bags into the spacesuits. “With everything in place,” said British space writer Ben Evans, “spacesuit donning began and, in true F-Troop fashion, it ran as crisply as a military campaign.” About 10:10 a.m. CST:  
  
Bobko: Okay. And I’ll go down and see if we can get those guys on the biomed.  
  
CapCom: Thank you.  
  
Bobko: Houston, we should be set up for the EVA comm. We should be getting to you with the biomeds in just a second.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Bobko: And we prefer not to change out the LiOH canister right now since there’s a lot going on right in front of the hatch there.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we copy and that’s no problem.  
  
Bobko: Okay. We’ll put that off probably until the guys start to pre-breathe or something… Houston, Story and Don are plugged in, so you should be getting biomed.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we’re still looking… Challenger, Houston, we have good biomed on EV1 and 2, and if you want to reconfigure your UHF so we have good UHF at Yarragadee, go ahead and do that. We’ll be at Yarragadee at 21:53 and we’ll be handing over to the Orbit Team by then. The planning shift would like to wish you the best on your EVA and to tell that it’s been a pleasure to execute with you this morning. We’ll execute with you anytime.  
  
Bobko: Thank you very much, Dick.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston at two days, 21 hours 45 minutes Mission Elapsed Time. Challenger has passed out of range of the tracking station at Indian Ocean. The crew is currently on the timeline for their EVA preparations. During this last pass they were configuring their switches to check out the biomedical attachments that the mission specialists will wear during the EVA. The change-of-shift press conference with the off-going Flight Director Randy Stone is scheduled to begin about 11:00 a.m. Central Time this morning. We understand that that should take place approximately on schedule as planned. Two days, 21 hours 46 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control.  
  
  
Both Story Musgrave and Don Peterson climbed into Challenger’s airlock – “a cylindrical structure about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle,” as Ben Evans put it – mounted in the bulkhead between the middeck and the payload bay. “Its inclusion within the cabin preserved the maximum amount of usable volume in the payload bay,” added Evans. “It had two hatches: one for the astronauts to enter from the middeck and another through which they would venture into the payload bay.”  
  
The spacesuits – “a $2.5-million miniature spacecraft in its own right,” wrote Evans – were mounted on the wall of the airlock chamber and were each in two parts, a lower trouser section and upper torso section which was complete with arms and backpack. The suits, manufactured by Hamilton Standard, joined together at the waist with an airtight locking ring. “Musgrave and Peterson firstly pulled themselves into the lower torso, which featured joints at its hips, knees and ankles and a metal body seal closure for connecting to a ring on the upper torso. It also included a large bearing at its waist, which offered greater mobility and allowed the astronauts to twist whilst their feet were held firmly in restraints,” explained Evans.  
  
He continued, “After donning the trousers of the suit, their next step was to plug the airlock’s service and cooling umbilical into a display and control panel on the front of the upper torso. This would provide cooling water, oxygen and electrical power from the shuttle until shortly before they were scheduled to go outside, thereby conserving the limited consumables available in their backpacks. The two men finally entered the airlock itself, where the upper torsos hung on opposing walls and, through a half-diving, half-squirming motion, maneuvered themselves into the top halves of the suits.”  
  
“With arms outstretched,” said Evans, “and Bobko nearby to assist, they slipped themselves into the upper torsos and their waist rings were brought together, connecting the cooling water tubing and ventilation ducting of the long underwear and the biomedical sensors to their backpacks. Bobko then helped them to lock the body seal closure rings at their waists.”  
  
“The hard upper torso was essentially a fiberglass shell under several fabric layers of a thermal and micrometeoroid garment. On its back, it held the life-support system and on its chest the display and control unit by which the spacewalker would manage his or her oxygen, coolant and other consumables,” added Ben Evans. “In fact, due to the difficulties in seeing down to read labels on the unit, the mirrors on the suits’ left wrist would help immeasurably. For additional ease, the labels were written backwards!” There also was a spiral-bound, 27-page checklist placed on each suit’s left arm.  
  
  
10:20 a.m. CST – “We’re about three minutes away from reacquiring communication with Challenger over the Yarragadee station. Currently on orbit number 47, the crew is in their pre-EVA activities, preparing the equipment in the airlock according to the standard timeline. It appears that the activities are running close to the preflight published timeline. That timeline, as updated slightly on the planning shift last night, is very similar to the activities as in the published CAP. And we appear to be very close to that at this time.”  
  
  
CapCom (Jon McBride): Good morning, Challenger, you got the Crystal Team with you at Yarragadee for eight minutes… And Challenger, if you’ve reconfigured, you got the Crystal Team here with you for about four and a half minutes at Yarragadee… And Challenger, if you read us we’ll see you over Orroral in about a minute and a half…  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, two days, 22 hours two minutes Mission Elapsed Time (10:32 a.m. CST). We have a brief gap here as we go between the stations of Yarragadee and Orroral in Australia. It’ll just be a very brief pass as we go over the Orroral station, perhaps not enough for any significant communication. If there’s any attempt, it’s coming up in about a minute. Then it’ll be some time before we reacquire over the continental United States; possibly a brief glimpse on the edge of Hawaii’s range, but probably about 25 or 30 minutes before we actually can pick them up over the continental United States. The crew appears to be pretty much on the timeline, on the published Crew Activity Plan for their EVA activities. Mission Specialists Musgrave and Peterson are preparing the airlock and their equipment at the present time, probably an hour away from pre-breathe start.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, we got the Crystal Team with you at Orroral for a minute.  
  
Bobko: Read you loud and clear.  
  
CapCom: Read you the same, Bo.  
  
Bobko: Story has his (garble) on and Don has the head piece on.  
  
CapCom: Copy. Okay, we’re going to lose you in about ten seconds and we’ll see you up at Buckhorn at 22:30.  
  
Bobko: Roger. We’ll see you in about 25 minutes.  
  
  
“Now, basically what you do is, first of all, obviously you get all the equipment out and you just check it over,” Don Peterson said in his November 2002 interview for the JSC NASA Oral History Project. “You make sure everything’s laid out properly, and everything that you can check is working properly. The whole thing is set up so that you test as you go along. In other words, you don’t just put the suit on and open the hatch. You make sure that everything’s working before you go that final step.”  
   
“We were instrumented. We wore these little stick-on things to measure heart rate and that sort of thing. That all has to be hooked to a little black box kind of like this, and that’s, of course, inside the suit. Then you put on the - there’s what looks like long underwear, but it’s a cooling garment,” Peterson continued. “The cooling garment has water tubes that run through it, and they also hook through a connector to the suit, and you pump water through there. You can change the temperature with a valve on the outside of the suit. So if you get too hot, you can run a little more cold water, and too cold, you can turn it off or turn it down. But you get all that stuff on.”   
  
I wore glasses, and so they have something they rub on the glasses so they won’t fog up, that’s one of the worst thing that could happen to you. You’re inside a helmet and you can’t get your hands inside the suit. So they want to make sure that didn’t happen. I had glasses that had, like, a strap that went around the back of my head so you couldn’t have them fall off inside the suit.”  
  
“To aid his 49-year-old eyes, just before donning the helmet, Peterson tied his glasses securely onto his head and pulled on his Snoopy cap, equipped with microphone and headphones to provide two-way communications with his crewmates and Mission Control,” added Ben Evans in his book _Space Shuttle Challenger – Ten Journeys into the Unknown_. “Next came the gloves. Snapped into place on the wrist rings of the upper torso, these had silicone rubber fingertips to provide a measure of tactile sensitivity when handling tools in Challenger’s payload bay.”

Finally, the enormous polycarbonate bubble helmets were lifted over the astronauts’ heads and clicked into place on the neck rings of their upper torsos,” wrote Ben Evans. “Over the top of each helmet was an assembly containing manually adjustable visors to shield their eyes from solar glare, together with two EVA lamps to illuminate work areas out of range of the Sun or the shuttle’s own payload bay floodlights. Mobility in the neck rings was unnecessary, because the helmets were easily big enough to allow the astronauts to move their heads around.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston at two days, 22 hours 26 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (10:56 a.m. CST). We’re about four and a half minutes away from picking up communication with the Challenger over the continental United States. Just a reminder that the change-of-shift press conference with off-going Amber Team Flight Director Randy Stone will take place at about 11:15 a.m. Central Time. This is Mission Control… Mission Control Houston, standing by for Acquisition of Signal through the continental United States…  
  
CapCom: Hello, Challenger, we’re with you over Buckhorn for about six minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Hi there.  
  
CapCom: Hello.  
  
Musgrave: (garble)  
  
CapCom: And say that again please.  
  
Musgrave: The helmets are going on.  
  
CapCom: Okay.  
  
PAO: Mission Control in Houston, Mission Specialist Musgrave reporting they were putting on their helmets. EVA position reports that both helmets are on at the present time and they’ll be doing a leak check on those and then a purge, and that they are now about fifteen minutes away from the start of pre-breathe activities. That’s a three-and-a-half-hour pre-breathe.  
  
  
“We started out with what we thought a little bit ahead when I came in,” Crystal Team Flight Director Harold Draughon said later. “About the time we were generally getting 30 minutes from pre-breathe it became obvious though that more than being an hour or so ahead, like I first thought we were, we were really right on time.”  
  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, we here on the ground are ready to support your EVA comm configuration anytime you want to do it. We recommend waiting to Dakar if it’s okay with you.  
  
Bobko: Okay, Jon. There’s a lot of talk on the checkout and I can’t understand you sometimes.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control. We see the astronauts going through their checkout at the present time. Musgrave is the one with the red band around his… the legs of his spacesuit. There’s another red marking on the life-support system backpack. Pilot Karol Bobko assisting them in their checkout. They have a lot of systems to check over as they remain mounted to the wall of the airlock so that their life-support systems are hooked up to the spacecraft for power and cooling. so they do not have to diminish the power in their EMUs.  
  
Bobko: Houston, leak tests were successful. We’re about a minute and a half into the purge mode.  
  
CapCom: That sounds great, Bo.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control, Musgrave and Peterson about ten minutes away from beginning their pre-breathe. At the present time they announced they’re part way through their helmet purge… suit purge… This is Mission Control Houston. Once they start that three-and-a-half-hour pre-breathe, it’s a fairly strict timeline. They should… they will be washing the nitrogen out of their blood so they do not experience any bends in the reduced pressure of the spacesuits. We should expect the EVA probably to begin… probably close to 3:00 p.m. Central Time. We would be expecting the crew to egress through the hatch from the airlock into the payload bay at about that time. Two days, 22 hours 45 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston…  
  
Weitz: Hello Houston, Challenger. Are you there?  
  
CapCom: Yes, sir. We’ll be with you for about three and a half more minutes. We’d like for you to configure after LOS in Bermuda for the air-to-ground checks over Dakar.  
  
Weitz: Well, we’re ready now. Are you?  
  
CapCom: Okay, we’re ready. You’ll have to reconfigure and don’t forget the power switch on AW18 delta.  
  
Peterson: Do you read me alright?  
  
Musgrave: I do now, yeah. I’m not hearing P.J. at all.  
  
Weitz: That’s because I’m not talking to you.  
  
  
11:19 a.m. CST – “We just passed out of range of the tracking station at Bermuda; we will reacquire in about three and a half minutes over Dakar. During that recent pass we got television coverage down from the spacecraft and Mission Specialists Musgrave and Peterson in their suits mounted to the walls of the airlock. They should be beginning their pre-breathe cycle in just a few minutes. During that last pass. We did a communications check with… the communication as it occurs between the ground and the Mission Specialists in the suits. All three systems appeared to be good in that check. We’ll be hearing from them again in about two and a half minutes over Dakar.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, we’re back with you over Dakar for about nine and a half minutes.  
  
Bobko: Roger, Houston. We started the pre-breathe at 22:53. (11:53 a.m. CST).  
  
CapCom: We copy. 22:53.  
  
  
“The shuttle operates at typically sea-level pressure,” explained Don Peterson in 2002, “which is not quite 15 pounds per square inch. The suit operates at about 4.3 pounds per square inch. But what happens is, if you took a human being and suddenly went from 14.7 down to 4.3, your body has a lot of nitrogen in it, absorbed. It’s absorbed in tissues and fluids, particularly in fatty tissue. If you take the pressure off, that nitrogen starts to form bubbles, and that’s what’s called bends. Some divers, deep-sea divers, have died from that because they came up too fast and the pressure decreased, and they’d been breathing high-pressure air at depth when they came up. The nitrogen will actually… those bubbles will get big enough that they’ll mess up your heart. They will cause problems in your brain, and they can kill you, and they cause extreme pain, like, in joints and things like that.”  
  
“Otherwise known as Caisson Disease,” explained space writer Ben Evans, “the bends are triggered by the formation and expansion of nitrogen gas bubbles in the blood when subjected to a rapid decrease in external pressure. The consequences can be dire: ranging from severe pain in the joints to paralysis and eventually death. Indeed, the name _‘bends’_ comes from the fact that sufferers instinctively bend into a fetal position.”  
  
In order to sidestep the dangers facing both deep-sea divers and spacewalking astronauts, Don Peterson explained that they had to breathe pure oxygen for three and a half hours. At 14.7 psi this period would have been even longer; therefore the cabin pressure already had been gradually reduced to a safe level of around 10.2 psi. “So, you’ve got the suit on, and you’re essentially just hanging on the wall there. All you can do is just wait while you breathe oxygen,” said Peterson.  
  
“Now, what happens is, as you breathe oxygen, the nitrogen, the gasses that are inside your body, try to equalize with the gasses that are on the outside. So you’re breathing oxygen. So the nitrogen gets displaced by oxygen, and little by little, the nitrogen all comes out of your body – not all of it, but most of it comes out of your body. It literally goes out into the suit, but it gets flushed through the suit while you’re in the airlock, because you’re hooked to the shuttle system. It gets flushed out into the orbiter. So they get most of the nitrogen out.”

While the two spacesuited mission specialists were just hanging around… breathing slowly… ever so slowly… they dozed off. Donald Peterson explained later, “People don’t believe this, but, like I say, we’d had a very busy and a long hard mission, and while we were breathing oxygen for three and a half hours, you can’t really do anything. Story and I slept. I mean, I slept about two and a half hours, probably the best sleep I had on orbit, because you’ve got fresh oxygen coming in over your head, and it kind of makes a nice whishing sound, and there’s no other noise. We turned the radio receivers way down so we weren’t bothered by people talking. Got some really good sleep before we went outside. People asked, _‘How in the world can you sleep just before you’re getting ready to go?’_ I said, _‘Well, you know, you get tired enough, you can sleep almost anywhere.’_ ”  
  
Meanwhile, Commander Weitz and Pilot Bobko got busy troubleshooting the onboard teleprinter, activating the Getaway Special canister containing the Japanese snow experiment and cleaning up the DEU and DDU air filters. “Welcome to Flight Day 4,” CapCom Jon McBride told the astronauts. “You’re right over Houston… and we’ve got a lot of people outside waving at you.”   
  
One orbit later, at about 2:00 p.m. CST, while Challenger was in range of the Hawaiian Islands, Mission Control Houston asked for a voice check with all four crewmembers, because a short notice VIP phone call was expected during the upcoming pass over the continental United States…  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, three days, one hour 29 minutes Mission Elapsed Time. We’re about to reacquire communications with the Challenger over Hawaii…  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, we’re with you over Hawaii for eight minutes.  
  
Bobko: Got you, Houston, loud and clear.  
  
CapCom: You sound loud and clear... Bo, when you get a chance sometime, let’s get a voice check from the other three crewmen during this Hawaii pass.  
  
Musgrave: EV1 loud and clear, Jon.  
  
CapCom: I read you loud and clear, Story.  
  
Peterson: EV2. You’re loud and clear.  
  
CapCom: Read you the same, Don.  
  
Bobko: I’ll get P.J. on the headset. He’s still struggling with the panel… and we’ll just remain in this configuration until after MILA.  
  
CapCom: Sounds good… Tell P.J. we’re working on a union card for him…  
  
Weitz: Hello Houston.  
  
CapCom: Read you loud and clear, P.J.  
  
Weitz: Same here. I’ve got to go back to one last stubborn screw that won’t go in… the last one in the whole batch.  
  
CapCom: Well, that’s good news. It’s always the last one… and we’re a little under a minute here at Hawaii. We’ll see you over Buckhorn at one-three-niner.  
  
Bobko: Roger, at one-three-niner, in about two minutes…  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, three days, one hour 38 minutes Mission Elapsed Time. We have a brief gap in the communications here as the orbiter passes between the range of the tracking stations at Hawaii and the reacquiring over the continental United States in about a minute and a half. Mission Specialists Musgrave and Peterson have about 45 minutes remaining in their pre-breathe activity. Shortly after they finish the pre-breathe activity, they can begin their preparations for the EVA and depressurizing the airlock. Perhaps shortly we’ll get an update on when they plan to begin that. At three days, one hour 39 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
 CapCom: Hello Challenger, we’re with you over Buckhorn for about seven and a half minutes.  
  
Bobko: Roger, Houston, read you loud and clear.  
  
Weitz: Houston, Challenger.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead, P.J.  
  
Weitz: Yeah. The DDU and DEU cleaning is complete. The closeouts have been replaced. It was a lot of hard work, but I really think it was necessary. I’m glad we did it now. I gave an estimate yesterday that the screens I could see through the holes in panels L8 and R9 and R8, or whatever they are, were about 40 to 50 percent covered, and actually it was closer to 90 to 95. So we really took a lot of stuff off of that.  
  
CapCom: Probably saves us about a week in turnaround.  
  
Weitz: When we’re cleaning something up here…  
  
CapCom: And P.J., TV capability does exist for MILA at your call, if you want to use it.  
  
Weitz: Yes, and we set up for it.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. We expect to have some television here coming up over the MILA pass. Commander Paul Weitz going through his housekeeping duties, cleaning the filters that gain particles, lint, whatever out of the air as it flows in to cool some of the electronic gear. It’s an inflight maintenance procedure to go in and vacuum off those screens which collect anything that happens to be floating through the air.  
  
CapCom: And P.J., we’ve got about a minute here at Buckhorn. We’re going to go into a minute and a half gap and we’ll see you at MILA.  
  
Weitz: Okay.

———

Shortly before 2:20 p.m. CST, 3:20 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in Washington D.C., President Ronald Reagan was sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, waiting to be put through to the Challenger astronauts. Several White House correspondents were also present in the Oval Office for that special phone call.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you over MILA for about six and a half minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston.  
  
CapCom: And you’ll be pleased to know that President Reagan is standing by to say a few words to you. So without further ado, we’re going to switch you over to the White House and the communications staff up there.  
  
White House: Yes, Steve, hello?  
  
PAO (Steve Nesbitt): White House, you’re on. Go ahead.  
  
White House: Yes. How do you read us, Challenger?  
  
Weitz: Roger, loud and clear.  
  
White House: Okay. The President will be on in just a little while here. We just want you to give us a little voice check her. Can you give us another quick test count?  
  
Weitz: Test… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…  
  
White House: Okay, loud and clear on this end. Let me check our (garble) please.  
  
Weitz: You’re breaking up a little bit, White House.  
  
White House: Okay… How about now? Check… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…  
  
Weitz: That sounds a little bit scratchy, but it’s workable.  
  
White House: Okay, let me check with our (garble). Okay, we’re standing by for the President. Are you ready?  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir… we’re still hanging in there…  
  
White House: Oh, all right… I was just about to call… Okay, stand by…

Reagan: Hello? – How do I know when they’re on?  
  
White House: Go ahead please.  
  
Reagan: Yes. Am I talking to the Space Shuttle Challenger?  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir, you certainly are.  
  
Reagan: Well, listen, first of all, congratulations on the continued success of your mission. I understand you’re even ahead of schedule.  
  
Weitz: Well, we like to stay that way, Mr. President.   
  
Reagan: Well, listen. The Challenger proves again the quality of our technology, and the versatility of the Space Shuttle serves as a symbol, I think, of our commitment to maintain America’s leadership in space. But all of it would be without any merit at all if it wasn’t for men that we have, like all of you, Commander Weitz, and your Pilot Karol Bobko, and your Mission Specialists Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson. And I know that while one of you has been out in space there in connection with the space platform, for the others this is your maiden voyage.  
  
Weitz: Well, thank you, sir, and we appreciate that. I know it’s… it’s an old and well-used saw, but, you know, we just get the glory. We really do stand on the shoulders of giants when we participate in this program.  
  
Reagan: Well, you’re pretty close to giants yourselves. – Now, I know that I shouldn’t keep you too long, because you’re kind of anxious to make that spacewalk out there. And we’ll be all watching for that down here. And just please know that all of us, the American people, are very proud of your service to your country and what you’re doing. And we wish you well on the continued flight and on the spacewalk. (Laughing) I can’t say I envy you… but we are very proud of all of you. Good luck to you on the rest of your mission. And God bless you.  
  
Weitz: Well, thank you very much, sir. It’s an honor and a privilege to be here, and we very much appreciate your call.  
  
Reagan: Alright. Goodbye.   
  
Weitz: So long.

——-

CapCom: Okay, Challenger, we’re back in Houston now. We’ve got about two and a half minutes to go.  
  
Weitz: Okay… Okay, we just updated the clocks, Houston. We’ve got 29 minutes until we’ve got three and a half hours of pre-breathe in.  
  
CapCom: We concur. And we’re getting some good shots of the hatch there…  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: We’ve a little under a minute here at MILA. We’ll see you down at Ascension at two-zero-eight (2:38 p.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: That’s a great shot from camera bravo.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, passing out of range of the tracking station at MILA right now. We had communication with the White House over that pass… Again, checking out the cameras for the upcoming spacewalk… It’s three days, one hour 56 minutes into the mission of Space Shuttle Challenger, orbit number 50… The crew has about 27 minutes remaining in their three-and-a-half-hour pre-breath period.  
  
  
“Story Musgrave and Don Peterson, by now floating motionless in Challenger’s tiny airlock, were, in effect, small spacecraft in their own right,” said space writer Ben Evans. “However, they were not yet self-contained, as their oxygen, electricity and cooling water were still being provided by the shuttle systems; not until shortly before the two men ventured outside would they transfer to the life-support utilities of their suits’ onboard consumables. Before they could do that, they had to lower the airlock pressure to 4.3 psi in order to check their integrity.”  
  
During the time that you are pre-breathing, the suit pressure regulator is set to maintain suit pressure slightly above airlock pressure (a delta pressure of 0.9 plus or minus 0.5 psi),” EV2 Don Peterson explained. “That’s done because the suit is not absolutely air tight, and you want to be certain that any small leakage flow goes from the higher pressure inside the suit to the lower pressure outside and thus none of the outside atmosphere which contains nitrogen will get back into the suit.”  
  
Peterson continued, “After you get most of the nitrogen out of your body, you can start pressure checking the suit. That’s done by lowering the pressure in the airlock while the suit pressure regulator is set to maintain 4.3 plus or minus 0.1 psi above outside pressure. If I remember correctly, the airlock is bled down in a couple of steps while the crew observes the rate at which the suit pressure drops to its assigned value and then there is a waiting period to be certain the suit is not leaking. When the pressure checks are complete, you can let all the air out of the airlock, open the outer hatch and go outside.”  
  
2:38 p.m. CST – “We’ll be reacquiring over Ascension Island here shortly. The crew has about fifteen minutes remaining in the scheduled pre-breath.” The interior of the Challenger’s airlock was extremely cramped – as became evident listening to Musgrave and Peterson as they disconnected their EMUs from the airlock walls and closed the airlock – an operation which could be performed from the inside, as well as from the orbiter’s middeck. They were now in the final stages of getting ready for the first U.S. spacewalk since February 3, 1974 – when Skylab 4 astronauts Carr and Gibson had spent five hours 19 minutes outside, retrieving ATM film and experiment packages from Skylab’s exterior.   
  
  
Musgrave: (garble) far enough, I think.  
  
Peterson: Okay, there you go. Lead the way. You got them on? Push down the handle a little bit. There we’re locked. Now be sure… as far as the equalization valves here are close.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, equalization valve off… and off.  
  
Peterson: Thank you.  
  
Musgrave: We’ll put the covers on here.  
  
Peterson: No. Don’t do that, because we may need a rapid repress and that kind of business. They stay off. The covers stay off, okay?  
  
Musgrave: Okay. Want me to push you up a little bit, Don?  
  
Peterson: I think I’m just about up against the ceiling, Story. I could bend over and get a little higher maybe. My backpack is up against the footrest now. I won’t go much higher than that.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, that’ll be fine right like that.  
  
Peterson: Okay.  
  
Musgrave: Now, I’m going to try to swing my legs up there… No, I’m good right here… I’m perfect right here for everything, Don.  
  
Peterson: Okay. What are you going to do with that?  
  
Musgrave; Well, I’m going to stow it as soon as we get done using it.  
  
Peterson: Okay.  
  
Musgrave: How are we doing approaching 3:30 out there, guys?  
  
Bobko: We show about three minutes and ten.  
  
Musgrave: Three minutes and ten seconds to go?  
  
Bobko: We’ve got 2:11 now…  2:18  now has passed, so it’s about ten more minutes…  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you for about four more minutes over Ascension. We’ll not have Botswana pass with you.  
  
Bobko: Roger, Houston, got the hatch closed, and we’re waiting for a go for depress on time.  
  
CapCom: Sounds good, Bo.  
  
Bobko: Copy. We have a go for depress on time.  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative. You have a go… You might want to double-check that seal, if you didn’t’ already.   
  
Bobko: We visually inspected it all around. I don’t know what else to do.  
  
CapCom: Sounds good.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Communication between the crew and the ground indicating that they are essentially ready to depress the airlock in about ten minutes… Having accomplished that, they’ll will take the pressure down part of the way down to about 5 pounds, check for leaks and make sure that the suit integrity is good. And beyond that, after that check, they will depress to vacuum.

2:45 p.m. CST – “Astronauts Musgrave and Peterson in the airlock preparing to depressurize the airlock partially. That’s part of the procedure for going all the way to vacuum. We will not have voice communication during the upcoming pass over Botswana. That is a UHF-only station, and when the crew is in the… is configured in the EVA communication mode, we would be unable to communicate with them during that particular pass. We will pick them up again over Guam station in about 35 minutes, and by that time we will anticipate that they may have… they may have egressed the airlock, or at least depressurized and will have begun their spacewalk. We’ll be standing by to hear from them on that.”  
  
2:54 p.m. CST – “The astronauts Musgrave and Peterson have completed their three-and-a-half-hour pre-breathe time required and according to the EVA preparation timeline they now begin a twelve-minute airlock depressurization cycle. During that period of time the airlock is very slowly depressurized till it reaches 5 pounds. At that point they close the airlock depressurization valves and do checks on the spacesuits to determine there’s no leakage at 5 psi. They will wait at that once they have made that check before proceeding on with complete depressurization. The orbiter Challenger is currently over the Botswana site, although we are receiving no communication because of the special communication configuration onboard the spacecraft. The communications are set up to be in the EVA mode, that is so that they can speak with the ground during the spacewalk, and UHF-only sites we’re not able to receive any transmission from them. We’ll be reacquiring, however, over Guam in about 25 minutes and checking on their progress at that time.”

—————

And then, finally, they opened the airlock hatch leading out at the bottom of the forward bulkhead of Challenger’s floodlit payload bay. “Smile, you’re on _Candid Camera_ ,” Commander Weitz joked high above Borneo, as EV1 Story Musgrave slowly emerged from the circular hatch. “A butterfly coming out of its chrysalis, I guess,” Weitz later quipped during the post-flight crew conference. “Except he ain’t near as pretty...”  
  
“For Story Musgrave,” wrote Ben Evans, “who had spent years virtually designing the spacesuit that he now depended upon for his life, it was an intensely personal accomplishment. _‘This was to be only three hours of experience on top of 48 years,_ ’ he said later, _‘but it’s like a surgeon who’s been training sixteen years to operate. Sooner or later, I knew I was meant to walk in space.’_ The poetic justice of being first to venture into space wearing the fruit of so many of his labors was clearly not lost on the intensely philosophical Musgrave.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, three days, two hours 50 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (3:20 p.m. CST). We will be picking up communication with the orbiter again shortly on this pass over Guam.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, with you over Guam for about seven and a half minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger. Hatch is open, EV1 is halfway out. They’re configuring the airlock, getting ready for Don to come out.  
  
CapCom: That’s great news.  
  
  
“The plan called for three hours of activities,” said Ben Evans, “but in order to accommodate delays Musgrave and Peterson had up to six hours’ worth of consumables… Their time outside was limited, but the experience would remain with both men for the rest of their lives. _‘You remember little things like sound_ ,’ Musgrave told a post-flight press conference. _’Even though there’s vacuum in space, if you tap your fingers together, you can hear that sound because you’ve set up a harmonic within the spacesuit and the sound reverberates within it. I can still hear that sound today. But the main impression is visual: seeing the totality of humanity within a single orbit. It’s a history lesson and a geographic lesson – a sight like you’ve never seen’.”_  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control. We hear that astronaut Story Musgrave is at least partway out of the airlock now. The hatch is open. This will be the first American spacewalk since 1974, when Ed Gibson and Gerald Carr had an EVA on Skylab 4.

“From time to time,” described Don Peterson, “and I hope there are no psychologists and psychiatrists listening, I have a dream that I’m flying, not in an airplane, just flying. And I think EVA comes very, very close to that. I think when I first climbed out of the hatch, I climbed up on top of the toolbox. It’s up on one corner of the payload bay. And from there, the door was open down on one side and the cabin was curved back this way. You can look out through there. There’s about 120 degrees of absolutely nothing in front of you except the Earth and the sky. And that’s kind of an awesome view, and I really enjoyed that.”  
  
“There’s no question, the view out there is absolutely fantastic and the amount you can see of the Earth,” remembered Story Musgrave. “The Earth is really going by fast, even though you’re up between a 150, 170 miles, you can see an awful lot and the Earth is going by really fast. For me there was no concept of falling, and the Earth was not down either. We looked down, I would see the Earth, but it wasn’t down. So I did not feel like if I let go of things that I would fall. The zero-gravity had already, you know, grabbed me for some period of time. So there was no concept of falling or, if I dropped something, that it would fall; it would really just stay right there.”  
  
Don Peterson said, “I found that you adapt very quickly to the concept of zero-g, and I think your frame of reference moves with you. You adapt to what you see visually; you don’t have a sense of up, down, the way you do from holding yourself erect in a gravitational field, or pressure on your body, or anything. Ant it was all in all a very pleasant sort of feeling, and a secure kind of feeling.”  
  
“I never once worried about separating from the ship, or the tethers not working, or slipping and losing my grip on a handrail,” Peterson explained. “I think I just went about the work in kind of a business-like fashion. And we did a lot of things; we did not have a lot of time ti just play around. But when I did get a few minutes ahead and I could stop, I think I’d have to say most of what I experienced was a great deal of pleasure – and just from looking at things and seeing the Earth in different perspectives, and seeing colors and looking at the orbiter from a different perspective.”  
  
“Now, you have tethers,” Peterson continued. “You have a safety tether that’s a little short tether. Then you have the safety reel that you use when you’re outside, because you need to be able to move around. So what you do is you hook the safety tether inside the airlock, and you go out through the hatch. There’s a line that you hook your reel to. Now you’re hooked on the slidewire, and you can run up and down the handrail and drag this tether up and down with you.”  
   
“Then you unhook the safety tether that’s hooked inside the airlock. So you’re always tethered to something,” said Peterson.”We had a great advantage. Even if you came loose from the orbiter, if you drifted away, the orbiter can maneuver. So the orbiter could literally come pick you up. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to float away and be lost.”

Weitz: Okay. Don’s out of the hatch and Story’s up at the starboard longeron. I looked up and saw them looking over my shoulder in there.  
  
CapCom: Copy that, P.J. – Would you ask them to give us a status before we leave Guam? We have two and a half minutes to go.  
  
Peterson: Okay. Do you want me to read it to you?  
  
CapCom: We’re ready to copy.  
  
Peterson: PD2 is PJ press 4.3, O2 press eight-three-one, (garble) press 2.7, H2O gas pressure is 15.7, water pressure 16.2, O2 position is EDA, time of EDA 24 minutes, 93 percent power left, time remaining is 5 plus 51, 97 percent O2, 93 percent power, (garble) is 18.6, 020.9, H2O temp is 39 degrees, hatch back to PJ press.  
  
CapCom: We copy, Don. How about Story?  
  
Musgrave: Just a second… I hate that thing, to read it… It’s so bright out here. EDA (garble) 25 minutes, (garble) 93 percent power left, time left five-three-three at 93 percent power, 99 percent O2, 93 percent power left, battery volts 19.1, (garble) 4.9, O2 temperature’s 40, bridge pressure 4.3, oxygen (garble) three-nine, (garble) fan pressure 2.7, motor pressure 16.2, gas pressure’s 14.6.  
  
CapCom: And Story, tell me your O2 pressure again… We’re going LOS. We’ll see you at Hawaii, 3:05 (3:35 p.m. CST)… We need your O2 pressure again, Story, if you copy…  
  
Musgrave: Yeah, it’s eight-three-eight.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Got a copy that time.  
  
Musgrave: That wasn’t bad to get back. The light is still… in here brighter for this kind of condition. I tried it all the way up.  
  
CapCom: We copy.  
  
PAO: Okay. It appears that both crewmen are out of the airlock at the present time. They should be hooking up their slidewires. Musgrave will be called EV1 on this spacewalk, Peterson EV2. Musgrave will be attaching to the starboard-side slidewire, Peterson to the port-side. During that last portion of the pass, the mission specialists were reading off the indications on their EMU battery power, remaining oxygen and the other parameters that must be monitored periodically throughout the EVA. One of the first things that will be happening momentarily, Musgrave will be moving down the starboard side. During that period of time, as he goes all the way to the aft bulkhead, Peterson will be monitoring his motion, determining, watching the speed of the motion, how Musgrave is able to use the tethers, handholds, and various other restraints. The crewmen will be evaluating their communications performance, will be checking out payload bay and EMU lighting and will be evaluating potential worksites for possible contingency EVAs in the future. We’ll be reacquiring again in about four minutes over Hawaii, and we’ll be getting some television approximately at that time.

————

Judy Muller (CBS/JSC): This is Judy Muller, CBS News at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Just minutes ago, two astronauts opened the airlock hatch of the shuttle and stepped into the open cargo bay. It’s the first time Americans have taken a walk in space in almost a decade, the first time ever from a shuttle. Mission Specialists Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson have several tasks to perform during this three-and-a-half-hour Extravehicular Activity, as it’s called; certainly one of the most important: testing the new $2-million space suits for the first time in space…  
  
The first EVA, or spacewalk, was performed by a Soviet cosmonaut in 1965 (Alexei Leonov, Voshod 2, March 1965). He was followed that same year by an American, Edward White, on Gemini 4. My colleague Reid Collins, who is monitoring the spacewalk in New York, reported on that first American EVA. Reid, have things changed much since then?  
  
  
Reid Collins (CBS/NYC): Well, they’ve gotten a lot more complicated; you have now men in spacesuits that are self-contained. Ed White went out on a tether and he was supplied oxygen. And he was out there for just twenty minutes outside of Gemini 4. He didn’t really want to come back, as most people I think recall, within the allotted time.   
  
We then were in the days of playing catch-up with the Soviet Union. As you said, Leonov had already done the same thing. The Soviets used at that time the same sort of airlock mechanism, going onto pure oxygen as we now have come to do. White didn’t have to depressurize, or to de-nitrogenize his system, because they were on pure oxygen in the Gemini spacecraft all the time.   
  
Some of the differences, I suppose, was the fact that NASA wanted to keep the Ed White spacewalk a secret until just before it happened. They shipped in the long umbilical cord, the gold-covered cord that would be used for that, in secret. And Howard Benedict, the Associated Press writer discovered it through some of his sources at the Cape and broke the story that America was in fact going to try a spacewalk on Gemini 4. NASA’s reason for secrecy then was probably because they were not too fully confident that it might work, getting out the narrow door of the Gemini.   
  
First they said he might just stand up and look around. Then they decided, well, if we’re going to look good in the space race, as it was in those days, we better let him out. And he did come out… and he made twenty minutes worth of history. That was June of 1965, Judy.   
  
  
Muller: Right. Now it’s 1983, and we’re just minutes away from hearing from the astronauts. Thank you, Reid. They are, what they call _Acquisition of Signal_ coming up in about two minutes, and that means that they will be able to tell Mission Control how the spacewalk is going, just to get everybody up to date of what’s happened in the last twenty minutes or so.  
  
First out of the airlock hatch was Mission Specialist Story Musgrave; and he’s the 47-year-old medical doctor who also holds some five academic degrees. And he’s in such good physical condition, according to his colleagues… that they joke that he could do the spacewalk without a spacesuit. Of course, no one could do that. Space is not a friendly environment; those suits are designed to protect them from extreme temperatures and the vacuum of the void they’re entering. Matter of fact, the Sun delivers 215 degrees heat, and in the shade the temperature dips to minus 250; so, without those suits they couldn’t survive.  
  
Musgrave has now become EV1, and what he should be doing now, we will soon find out, is what they call _translating_ down the starboard side of the cargo bay, the open cargo bay, by attaching himself to a slidewire. EV2 is Mission Specialist Donald Peterson; and he’s translating, or moving, the same way down the portside. And this whole process takes about fifteen minutes. And during this time they should have been testing what they call their tethers, which is the cord that attaches them to the shuttle orbiter. If they didn’t have that tether, of course, they’d float off into space. So, it’s like an umbilical cord to their home base.

—————

And so the pair of spacewalkers moved along the slidewires extending along the sides of the open payload bay, tumbling and twisting in weightlessness like two huge teddy bears, held secure by thin tethers on reels – “They looked like acrobatic snowmen as they joyously floated, tumbled and wheeled about in their puffy white spacesuits,” a _Time_ article put it. The TV cameras captured the most dramatic scenes of manned spaceflight seen since the first Moon landing. Both men were obviously enjoying their work, and Story Musgrave, with his gold-plated mirror-like visor stowed, could be seen smiling and laughing as he waved at the camera lens, with Don Peterson doing graceful pirouettes in the background.  
  
  
CapCom: How does that compare to the water tank, Story?  
  
Musgrave: Well, there’s no viscosity. If you get it going, you can keep it going… There’s a reach right there that I could make in the water tank, but I can’t make it here…  
  
PAO: Musgrave now at the aft bulkhead evaluating the handholds on that rear wall of the spacecraft cargo bay.  
  
CapCom: We’ve got a good shot of Mother Earth behind you there, Story.  
  
Musgrave: (garble) This is a little deeper pool than I’ve been used to working in.  
  
PAO: Musgrave comparing the spacewalk to his earthly training in the water tank, saying it’s a little deeper pool than he’s used to working in.  
  
  
“I was looking for some, I don’t know, some kind of existential experience, or some being, or some kind of physical phenomenon to, you know, to really grab me and tell me I’m not still in the water tank,” Story Musgrave said post-flight. “I didn’t expect anything particular. I was open-minded about it. Now, this is funny, but things went so smoothly that, in a sense, I was disappointed by what I felt! I never got that transcendental jolt.”

CapCom: We’re looking right at Story in camera bravo.  
  
Musgrave: I see you… I’m going to sneak down around you so I can watch Don.  
  
CapCom: okay. We’ve got about 40 more seconds here at the Hawaii pass. We’ll see you at Buckhorn at 3:15.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, Don… after you head on across the port side, I’ll be down here. Actually, I’m going across the bottom…  
  
PAO: Peterson now moving along the port slidewire in the cargo bay. Beginning to lose signal now from the tracking station at Hawaii... America’s first spacewalk in about nine years seems to be going well at this point…  
  
  
3:44 p.m. CST – “We’ll be reacquiring over the continental United States just on the edge of the stations on the western U.S. for a brief pass in about a minute. After the crewmen have completed their evaluation of the handholds and restraints at the rear of the cargo by, they will both move back to the forward bulkhead on the port side. Musgrave will stop about the midpoint of the port hinge line and evaluate the handling and dynamics of the safety tether. During that test, he will attach to the port slidewire with the waist tethers and then allow his safety tether… the retractable tether on a reel which you may have seen bouncing about there during the recent pass… will allow that to pull him toward the starboard side. As he is pulled to the center of the bay, he will evaluate his ability to control the rotation of the EMU, his suit, by varying the tension on the two tethers, and this will be an evaluation of the reel-in characteristics. The tether has about a one-pound pulling force on it and we’ll be determining how it moves the crewman in the suit in the vacuum and weightless environment of space. We’ll be acquiring here momentarily…”

Back once more at the forward end of the payload bay, the two spacewalkers began to unstow tools that would be needed during the remainder of the EVA. – 4:18 p.m. CST: “Just passing out of range of the tracking station at Ascension and won’t reacquire communication until the spacecraft comes within range of Guam in about 39 minutes; so it will be quite a long Loss of Signal period… Still getting a little comm on the edge of the range of Ascension station... From the sounds of it, the crew is back up near the tool box area and will begin evaluating the tools and the tool box there. Musgrave talking about getting into the foot restraint… They lock the boots of their spacesuits into the foot restraint that enables them to work at the tool box. The removing and restowing of tools, evaluating movements and taking care of those, all the tools that are out are tethered at any time not allowed to float free… And they did another suit check, evaluating the condition of the EMUs and everything was continuing to go well… CapCom on this shift, who has been talking to the crew, astronaut Jon McBride… Sitting close by him astronaut Bill Fisher, who is the astronaut office expert on the spacesuits… We have about 37 minutes before we hear from Challenger again. At three days, three hours 50 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
  
The next task in the flight plan called for a simulation of procedures for levering back down into the payload bay a stuck ASE platform. If, for example, the tilt table that launched the IUS/TDRS-A combination had remained in its 90-degree tilt position, it would have been impossible to close the payload bay doors and Challenger would not have been able to return to Earth. In the event of such an emergency, the IUS tilt table would be winched back down into its correct position, using a combination of ropes and pulleys operated by a winch crank on the payload bay aft bulkhead. It was this procedure that Story Musgrave and Don Peterson were to simulate.

CapCom: P.J., if you would, we’d like for you to have the cameras prepositioned for us when we get to Hawaii.  
  
Weitz: We’ll do it now.  
  
CapCom: We’ve got about 30 seconds here at Guam. We’ll be over Hawaii at 4:41 (5:11 p.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, three days, four hours 34 minutes. It appears that Musgrave and Peterson are in the aft portion of the cargo bay, performing the ASE ops portions of the EVA for which they set up a rope and lock mechanism tied in with their winch and…  
  
CapCom: And P.J., just a quick reminder to go back to minus ZLV in about three or four minutes.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. During that operation on the aft bulkhead of the orbiter cargo bay they evaluate the operation of the winch. Callback from the status of the EMUs appears good at the present time; the consumables in the spacesuits being used approximately according to as they would be expected to be. We’ll be reacquiring communication in about five Minutes over Hawaii again on orbit 52. At three days, four hours 36 minutes, this is Mission Control Houston. 

5:09 p.m. CST – “We’ll be picking up communication again in about a minute and a half over the Hawaii site. We should be getting a little downlink television from the spacecraft. About two hours into the EVA now; about an hour and a half remaining. The crew is expected to be completing the IUS ops procedure test out of the contingency plans. Should the tilt table not have restowed to the proper position after deployment, the crew could go back, hook up the winch and pulley and crank it in, stow it to the proper angle. They should be about finished with that now and the EVA people think they will probably be moving back to the forward bulkhead about this time and will be beginning operations on the forward bulkhead… forward bulkhead winch operations. And at that time they will be setting up a similar rope and winch assembly, demonstrating the ability to apply a load with the winch, seeing how well they manage to stay in place while they turn the crank on that.”  
  
Donald Peterson described some difficulty they experienced during the aft bulkhead winch operations. “Story had a winch thing that was supposed to be used, if you had to, to pull the payload doors closed, and he was testing it. He wasn’t really using it on the doors, but he got the rope hung over something and then couldn’t release the winch. It was under a lot of tension. There was some talk about how can we get this thing loose so we can get it re-stowed, and we couldn’t leave it where it was because it was on the rollers that are used to latch the doors down. We said, well, we could cut it.”  
  
Weitz: Well, our options, I suppose, are to try to pry it off the door roller, or if there’s anything in the tool kit you can cut it with, we can always cut it.  
  
Musgrave: We’ve got scissors in it.  
  
Weitz: Do you think scissors will do it?  
  
Musgrave: Yeah.  
  
Weitz: Okay. Well, let’s let the ground work it over for a little bit.  
  
CapCom: Yeah, P.J. and Story, we’ll think this over and we definitely do not want you to cut it at this time.  
  
Weitz: Okay. We’re just looking at options, Jon.  
  
  
“They said, ‘No, we don’t want to cut the rope’ So finally Story just got up there and managed to pry the thing off with his hands,” Don Peterson said post-flight.  
  
  
Musgrave: Don, a good possibility is, if I can get it off the roller up above, I’ll get some slack that way.  
  
PAO: Astronaut Musgrave attempting to…  
  
Musgrave: Okay, I’ve got it.  
  
PAO: …sliding the rope…  
  
Musgrave: I yanked it off, the… I yanked it off the roller.  
  
PAO: The astronauts having momentary difficulty therewith the rope just tied up. It’s part of the winch operations on the aft bulkhead. The rope wraps around one of the pegs over which the doors latch on the aft bulkhead, one of the rollers. They could not get the tension loose from that line until Musgrave pulled the rope back up off the roller.  
  
  
5:19 p.m. CST – “The crew is completing… they’re moving the winch and rope assembly in the back. They’ll be stowing that before moving back to the forward bulkhead and going through the forward winch operation there. They had a momentary difficulty there as we passed over Hawaii. The crew had connected the winch and rope assembly trough the snatch block and down to the IUS tilt table, This was simulating the contingency operation of having to tilt that cradle back into the proper position if necessary, if somehow the actuating mechanism had not worked properly after the deployment of that satellite. Once the tension was put on the rope, the tension could not be released and astronaut Musgrave had to slip the rope from over the roller. That is a peg-like protrusion from the aft bulkhead over which one of the latches hooks on closing the cargo bay doors. Once that tension was removed, they could then pull it loose, pull the rope loose from its other attachments and winfd it in on the winch.”  
  
5:21 p.m. CST – “We’re having another long Loss of Signal period here, about 40 minutes before we reacquire over the Indian Ocean Station. Again, we’ll be passing over the Botswana tracking station, but will not have comm at the station since the crew is in a different communication configuration.”  
  


—————-

At that point in the spacewalk, at about 5:28 p.m. CST, EV2 Donald Peterson received a warning on his chest display. He explained later, “It’s interesting, I think, that my suit leaked pretty badly for a while and then stopped, and the ground didn’t know that at the time, or they’d have told us to stop. We did not know what it was. I stopped and said, _‘I’ve got an alarm.’_ Story stopped what he was doing and came over. We were trying to check what was going on, and the seal popped back in place and the leak stopped. So we went ahead and finished the EVA.”  
  
“Now, in those days we didn’t have constant contact with the ground. They didn’t see that. They weren’t watching at the time that that happened. They didn’t have any way to watch. By the time we dumped the data from the computer to the ground that showed that leak, we were already back inside the orbiter. Then they called up, and they were all upset about what happened here and what that was. We said, _’Well, we really don’t know. We got an alarm. The alarm stayed on for about twenty seconds or so, and then it went off, and everything seemed okay. So we just finished what we were doing. I mean, everything seemed all right.’_ ”  
  
Peterson continued, “Well, the next story I was told was that _‘You were working so hard that you were breathing so much oxygen, that you depleted the oxygen in the suit and forced a higher feed level and that set off the alarm.’_ Well, I talked to some of the doctors, and they said, _‘We don’t think that’s right.’_ ”   
  
“Well, my heart rate was very high. Working in the suit’s very hard. My heart rate was 192, okay, when I was cranking that wrench, so I was working very hard at the time. But a guy my size can’t work hard enough to breathe enough oxygen to set off the alarm that way. We didn’t find out what that was… really find out what that was for, like, two years, because they just sort of said, ‘No, we think you just breathed up too much oxygen. Don’t worry about it,’ and nobody really did.”   
  
“Before you fly, you put your suit on. The suit’s so heavy you can hardly stand up in it. So they put you in a sling that holds up the weight, and they put you in a vacuum chamber on a treadmill, and they let you walk the treadmill. That’s just to exercise the suit, because each suit’s a little different. They make funny noises, and the valves open and close a little different, and they want you to get used to that.”  
  
“Before Shannon Lucid flew, she was testing her suit. So she’s walking on the treadmill, and all of a sudden her suit… the alarm went off. What it says is, the oxygen flow rate’s too high, and that means that you’re pumping oxygen from the tank into the suit, but that also means the oxygen is going somewhere. It’s going out of the suit somewhere. So they knew they had a leak, in her case, and they could also see the oxygen coming into the vacuum chamber, because they were getting pressure inside the chamber. She stopped walking, and when she stopped walking and stood around a little, the leak stopped.”   
  
“There was a technician sitting there. These guys amaze me, but he looked at that, and he said, _‘You know, I’ve seen this same thing before. I don’t remember the details, but I’ve seen this same phenomenon before.’_ They went back and got the video of my flight and looked at it. He said – and this is kind of interesting – he said when Shannon Lucid was walking, since she’s a woman, her hips swivel, and her suit was actually rotating, and we’d never seen that with a guy because guys don’t walk that way. But he said, _‘That’s the same thing that happened to Peterson’s suit two years ago.’_ ”   
  
“I was working with a ratchet wrench. We were just testing tools and stuff,” Peterson described the situation during the actual EVA incident during STS-6. “We had foot restraints, but it took so long to set them up and move them around, that we didn’t want to do that. So I just held on with one hand, actually, to a piece of sheet metal, which is not the best way to hold on, and cranked the wrench with my other hand, and my legs floated out behind me. So as I cranked, my legs were flailing back and forth, like a swimmer, to react the load on the wrench. The waist ring was rotating back and forth, and the seal in the waist ring popped out, and the suit leaked bad enough to set off the alarm.”  
  
“So then they went in and changed the seals and all and fixed the problem. But it always amazed me that those guys were dedicated enough to have that kind of memory fixed in their heads, and as soon he saw that, he said, _‘I don’t know where I saw this. I’ve seen this before. I don’t remember where, but I’ll go find out,’_ and sure enough, he did, went back and went through a lot of film and said, ‘ _Looks just like this, doesn’t it?’_ Of course, I got a lot of insulting calls from that guy. ‘ _You know, your hips move just like Shannon’s.’_ ” I said, _’Not for you.’_ ”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston. We’re with you over Indian Ocean for about six and a half minutes. (…) We copied Story’s readings over Botswana on UHF. We might like to have Don’s and then we can check off that block.  
  
Weitz: Okay, but let me tell you first that at 4:58 Don had an “O2 use high” alarm. At the time he was back at the tilt table; he was working pretty hard. We watched him for a couple minutes at the time. (…) I think that, and Story concurs, that Don was just working hard and that’s an awful lot of O2 to pump through you; but he must have been doing it…  
  
  
During the evening Flight Director Harold Draughon had this to say about the incident: “Peterson had an O2 use high alarm; that’s an audible alarm much like a C&W system in the orbiter. And the O2 usage rates that we were seeing at that time were about 1.3 psi per minute. That alarm is keyed by a usage rate of something like ten psi per minute; clearly he was not using O2 at that rate – that would be an extremely high usage rate. And the best guess, but that’s all it is at this time, is that it was some sort of spurious instrumentation anomaly; and it happened that one time and that was all. There’s no indication that we really had a flow of that magnitude.”

————-

During the post-flight crew conference Mission Specialist Donald Peterson was asked by Discover magazine’s David Lee to give us an idea how constraint the EMU suits were, and, if at all, how easy it was to handle the tools. “For example, could you do a backyard tune-up job on my old jalopy wearing one of these suits?”  
  
“How long would you give me to work on it?” asked Peterson. “As long as I take,” replied Lee, “which is several days.”  
  
“I think any tool that you use in the suit takes more time,” Peterson explained. “Ideally, what I think we ought to strive for in the future is tools that can be used one-hand, i.e. tools that don’t require two hands to operate. For example, I used a set of vice grips on orbit, and you simply can’t use a set of vice grips one-hand, because you need one hand to hold them, and the other hand to make the adjustment. Once you get them clamped in place, you can start using them one-hand. But I think unless you’re going to provide foot restraints all over the vehicle so that the person can anchor himself. You need one hand to hold position with, and that says you have one hand remaining to work with the tool. And a lot of your tools are certainly not optimized for one-handed operation. And that’s something we might look at in the future.”  
  
“On the other hand,” said Peterson, “what we have is a standard set of tools that I think almost anybody in this program is familiar with and knows how to use one on the ground; and there’s some trade-off in that. These tools didn’t require any special design to amount to anything, and so you can use them. We had a couple of cases on orbit this last time where I did things that I really had not spent any great amount of time practicing. And although it took a little more exertion, and a little more time, it was certainly doable. And I think that’s about the best answer I can give you. It’s hard to say that a particular tool is 70 percent more difficult in space, or in the suit, than it is on the ground. We haven’t done that kind of evaluation, I don’t think.”  
  
“I think a lot of it depends on the task you’re trying to do with the tool,” added STS-6 Commander P.J. Weitz. “Given that the gloves are bulky and cumbersome – it’s kind of the best I can come up with – is, let’s take a pair of snowmobile mittens, is probably a poor example for down here, but heavy gauntlets. But a screwdriver, for example, given a task you’re trying to do in a cargo bay, may in fact not be a  one-handed tool. It just isn’t; you don’t have the dexterity in order to use a screwdriver with the pressurized glove you do in shirtsleeves in your backyard. As a matter of fact, I would say for instance, pliers and screwdrivers which we think of as one-handed tools, probably don’t meet that classification for EVA applications.”  
  
Asked about how he felt about the capability of doing actual satellite maintenance and repair in the suits, Don Peterson answered, “I think you can, and I think that for two reasons. Number one, I think we will learn better how to use the tools we have. And I also think that if, in the training and the development, we run into a situation that requires a special tool or a special technique, we’ll develop the tool or the technique as we go along. I have every confidence that we won’t send people out to do a job that they’re not prepared to do.”

————-

Two further major outside items remained to be tested. First the Payload Retention Device, which would secure any stray pieces of cargo in the bay prior to reentry and, secondly, the Massive Article Translation. In effect, this latter glorified name really meant “could an astronaut carry a heavy tool kit or object successfully from one end of the bay to another?”  
  
6:17 p.m. CST – “During that pass over the Indian Ocean Station it appeared astronauts Musgrave and Peterson were completing the forward bulkhead winch operations in which they hook up a line through pulleys mounted on the door rather than on the handrails on the forward bulkhead. They are over one of the rollers and apply some force to that by cranking the winch and evaluating their ability to do that with and without the foot restraints. As we were passing out of range of that station there Musgrave mentioned that they were about to be ready to begin the Payload Retention Device operation, that is evaluation of a system that can be used to tie down loose objects in the cargo bay, including the Remote Manipulator System, that is the mechanical arm that is sometimes flown to handle payloads. In the event that any of those things are unable to be properly latched down under their normal procedures, a crewman in a spacesuit can go out and, by using this strap and ratcheting device that is attached to it, can secure loose large objects in the payload bay. The readout from the EMUs indicating the status of the consumable items, the oxygen, the power, the other items on which the duration of the spacewalk depends, all look good after that readout. The EVA people seem happy with that and it looks like they could go on some time. We are already at three hours 16 minutes into the EVA and it looks like there’s plenty of room for contingency operations in that.”  
  
6:37 p.m. CST – “During that last (three-minute-short communications pass over Guam) the crew was given the authority to extend the EVA as necessary up to the point of about three days, seven hours and 14 minutes MET, or until the next pass over Indian Ocean Station, which is about an hour and seven minutes away. The crew indicated that would not be necessary. Musgrave had said that he estimated about 30 minutes more were needed in the EVA to complete some things and be able to get back into the airlock. Consumables status in the EMUs looks good. The crew has more than enough time to be able to stay out that extra hour, but they would like to get them back in and get the cabin repressurized and have plenty of time this evening before the crew goes to bed to check for any leaks.”  
  
6:39 p.m. CST – “We’ve got about a seven-minute gap before we reacquire over Hawaii and expect to see some television, some additional coverage of that EVA which is drawing to a close now. The crew will probably be out about another half hour. The crew is proceeding along fairly well with the EVA timeline. Musgrave referring to the procedure called the Massive Article Translation, where they take out a large bag of tools from the toolbox and Musgrave would carry that back to the aft bulkhead, across the aft bulkhead to the port slidewire and then back to the toolbox; and that would be to evaluate the dynamics of carrying a large mass in space.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston at three days, six hours 15 minutes Mission Elapsed Time on orbit 53. Challenger will be passing within range of the Hawaii tracking station momentarily.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. (Garble) we got this off.  
  
Weitz: What is that thing you’re working on there, Story? Is that the massive article locker?  
  
Musgrave: That’s the (garble) centerline latch tools. They don’t look like much out here… a bag of centerline latch tools.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And P.J., we’re back with you over Hawaii for about seven and a half minutes… And Challenger, Houston, with you for about seven more minutes. We’ve got a good picture.  
  
Weitz: Okay. And you’ve got the cameras.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we’ll take control.  
  
Weitz: We just finished the massive Article Translation, did the CVSA (garble) centerline latch tools (garble)…. Got a hatch ingress.  
  
CapCom: We copy.  
  
PAO: Don Peterson hanging about halfway out the hatch.  
  
Peterson: Where are we, P.J.?  
  
CapCom: And you should be over the big island of Hawaii in about a minute and a half.  
  
Peterson: Okay.  
  
Weitz: I was just looking out the top window… and kind of behind you now there’s a little patch of… looks like shallow water, almost dead astern. It’s light green amidst of all that blue.  
  
Peterson: Yeah. That’s a little patch of shallow water.  
  
Weitz: Okay. We’re coming up over the Hawaiian Islands.  
  
Peterson: That’s not one of the Hawaiian Islands though.  
  
Weitz: That’s all of them, Don. That’s all of them. You’re a long ways away.  
  
Peterson: Whatever you say, P.J…. I’m just not seeing what you guys are looking at.  
  
The sight was incredible, without a doubt – but the astronauts couldn’t say the same about the view when they were looking directly down their chests. ”The DCM lights, these are the little modules on the crew’s chest that they use to read the instrumentation parameters during the EVA,” said Flight Director Harold Draughon. “You’ve probably heard us reading those values on pressures and time remaining and power levels and voltages and those kinds of things. They reports that in sunlight, when they were in bright sunlight, that that device was difficult to read. It’s got a set of LED lights, much like digital clocks. And there is an intensity control there, but it was not adequate in a real bright light; they’re difficult to read. I’m sure the people will go back and look at what needs to be done to make that more usable.”  
  
  
CapCom: And Don, is it any easier to read your DCM with your visor down?  
  
Peterson: No, it isn’t. I tried that and it just blocks out more light. The problem is that when we read LEDs, it’s not very bright. When you get any kind of bright lioght, you almost can’t see them.  
  
CapCom: We copy.  
  
Peterson: By the way, I don’t know who to thank, but I appreciated the (garble) pass when we stayed in attitude zero and went around the Earth one time. It was real nice.  
  
CapCom: You can thank the Flight Director for that.  
  
Peterson: Many thanks, many thanks. It was spectacular.  
  
CapCom: You owe him one.  
  
Weitz: (Garble) probably camera overtemp. We got one of them. We’ll find it…  
  
CapCom: And can you look down and see Kilauea? It’s supposed to be really putting on a show now.  
  
Weitz: Not yet, but it’s pretty cloudy over the islands as we’re coming down here.  
  
CapCom: And P.J., we turned off camera Charlie, so it won’t be overtemp.  
  
Weitz: Okay, thank you. Hawaii is just like it was yesterday; you can tell where the island is by the color and the shape of the island of Hawaii.  
  
CapCom: We’ve got about two and a half more minutes of this exciting TV show.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, Don, what have we got left to do around here?   
  
Peterson: (garble) Story.  
  
Musgrave: (garble) ready?  
  
Peterson: Yes, when you are. Okay.  
  
PAO: Musgrave’s completed closing up the toolbox and all the items appear to be stowed away.  
  
Peterson: I’ll stay down low.   
  
PAO: Peterson is in the airlock.  
  
Musgrave: Beautiful.   
  
PAO: Good picture of Musgrave going back in, completing America’s first spacewalk in nine years, and the first in the shuttle program. 

———-

“We’re passing out of range of the Hawaii station now. We saw astronauts Musgrave and Peterson getting back into the airlock, preparing to repressurize and that’ll take a little time, thus completing this spacewalk, the first one of the Space Shuttle program; a walk that lasted nearly four hours. The crew had plenty of margins left in their consumables, their power, and the oxygen, all the life-support systems in their backpacks, and had completed all the tasks outlined for them in the EVA checklist. And they are now back in the airlock. At three days, six hours, 26 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (6:56 p.m. CST), this is Mission Control Houston.”  
  
“They finished out their planned activities,” Flight Director Draughon explained later that day. “It was really a clockwork procedure. We thought it went very well.” – Asked by _ABC’s_ Jules Bergman if he would care to augment, to elucidate and enhance his remarks that this was a _smooth_ EVA, Draughon said, “I don’t know that I have any better adjectives to use. It was quiet a spectacular show. It was very smooth, the crew was quiet well rehearsed, and obviously very prepared to do the tasks that we have set them, asked them to do. They went through them in a very timely fashion,  and the fact that they started right on time and, in my records, were within about eight minutes of finishing some three, three and a half hours later right on time, having completed everything we asked them to do… I think that speaks for itself.”  
  
After the flight, Shuttle Program Manager Dr. Glynn Lunney said, “It was terrific, right by the book. The crew seemed to be very comfortable, and it was most impressive to get that sense of scale with people out there against the backdrop of that huge cargo bay. The whole exercise points up the fact that even though we have not done an EVA in a long time, we know how to train for it and execute it, and we do it well.”  
  
 _Time_ put it this way: “Their orbital excursion was much more than the romp it seemed to millions of television viewers back on Earth. Restrained only by 50-feet-long tethers, they drifted over the new Space Shuttle Challenger's big, open cargo bay, at times peering over the side into the dizzying abyss of space, only a thin wire away from eternity… The exercise offered a vivid preview of the future: that day not too far off when humans will be working regularly in the forbidding cosmic void.”

PAO: Mission Elapsed Time three days, six hours 43 minutes; we’ll be reacquiring very briefly over Santiago here in just about a minute – on orbit 53. We’ve just seen the completion of the spacewalk which began four hours and 11 minutes ago, approximately at Mission Elapsed Time three days, two hours 33 minutes. We don’t have a finish time yet since they would have gone back on orbiter power and oxygen, if they have done that yet while we were in the LOS phase or out of communication with the spacecraft. Standing by for acquisition through Santiago…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, we’re with you over Santiago for about a minute.  
  
Bobko: Oh, your system’s open and the airlock (garble). Looks like it’s going back down when he stops.  
  
Weitz: But we need to get the time it stops and start the clock running.  
  
Bobko: Okay… Story, we’ve been up to three and a half, we’re back down to two and a half. The airlock is not holding pressure. Did you close the dump valve in the airlock? Airlock depress, whatever it’s called…  
  
Musgrave: Okay, that’s it.  
  
Weitz: okay, that’ll make a big difference… Okay, can you reach over and turn the audio box and then I can just press and you can hear, so I won’t get as much noise?  
  
Bobko: Yes. You got it closed now, P.J.?  
  
Weitz: It’s closed.  
  
Bobko: I don’t know. You guys got it down there?  
  
Weitz: It’s closed.  
  
CapCom: Okay... How long do you have to check it?  
  
Weitz: Two minutes… Okay, (garble) I guess there’s a slight gap in the checklist there.  
  
CapCom: P.J., Houston’s with you for about 40 seconds. We see a good 5.0 psi differential there, and we’ll see you over at Botswana if you’re configured; if not, we’ll see you at Indian Ocean at 7:14 (7:44 p.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
   
  
Flight Director Draughon later explained, “In backing out of the EVA, when you open the hatch going out, there is a dump valve that you use, or a repress valve that has a position for dumping on to zero, a position for dumping on to 5 psi. And then it has a close position; the crew uses that to dump to 5 psi, do some checks, and then dump it to zero. And then, when you come back in, you can bring it up to five and it’s just used for controlling the pressure in the airlock, going up and coming down. Normally when you go out, and after you dump to zero, you put that valve back to the flat closed position, so that when you come back in, you can just go to the repress position and pump the airlock back up.”  
  
“That valve was not in the close position,” said Draughon, “it was still in the open position, the zero position. And when they went to flow, the airlock started coming back up with the high flow and was not obtaining the 5 psi and wasn’t maintaining the pressure. Before we could even get a call to the crew on what to do with that, they detected that they had left that valve in the ON position, closed it and continued with the repress.”  
  
“We had discussed actions for that anomaly, not for leaving the valve in the ON position, but for the ability to get the airlock back up,” Draughon continued. “”The things that you do normally are check those valves that are in the hatch itself; if those are indeed in the correct position, then you open the hatch back up, make sure you have a clean seal, clean the seals if they need it, and make sure you have nothing in the door, reclose it and pump it back up from there again. And those were the things that we were discussing when the crew found it out in the wrong position, secured it, and came right on up with it. So, we’ll probably add to the current procedures to say _‘Put that valve in the close position after you’ve dumped it to zero and you’ve gone back out.’_ We’ll probably add another line in those procedures that are used once you come back in – which is a typical way of doing that – add an item that says _‘Check, which means confirm, that something is in a position you should have already put it in.’_ We didn’t have that step, that line item in the procedures, and I’m sure we’ll add that in for the next flight.”  
  
7:19 p.m. CST – “The astronauts are repressurizing the airlock. At a period of time the pressure did not appear to be holding in the airlock. They checked the equalization valves and determined that one of them was not completely closed. They closed that valve and the airlock is holding pressure. Then they brought it up to five psi to check and make sure that it is remaining steady. And after a period of time, when they feel confident that it is holding, then they will bring it back up to equalize with cabin pressure. We’re about 17 minutes away from picking up the spacecraft again over Botswana; we may not have communication at that time, if they haven’t switched back to normal communication configuration from the way they were set up during the EVA. We do not yet have an official time for the ending of the EVA; it actually ends when they go back off of EMU power and are hooked up to the orbiter again. We should be able to pick that up sometime soon from the crew. The time for the beginning of the spacewalk was at three days, two hours and 33 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, which is counted from the time that the crewmembers go on the EMU power rather than orbiter power.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control. The approximate end to that time of the EVA is… it lasted for four hours and 17 minutes. That would have put it at about three days, six hours and 50 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (7:20 p.m. CST). That is the time that the EVA people are saying that they probably went back on orbiter power for the life-support systems. This is Mission Control.

CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you over Botswana for about five and a half minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Jon.  
  
CapCom: Hey, reading you loud and clear. I’ve got a couple of notes, P.J.  
  
Weitz: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: I guess, first of all, how did the repress go?  
  
Weitz: Well, I noticed some very interesting things during the repress when you get a minute or so, and if EECOM listens, I’ll tell you about them.  
  
CapCom: Okay, go ahead and give us those now.  
  
Weitz: Okay. During the repress… and we missed a step somewhere; we’ll have to see where we missed it or if it’s missing in the checklist… we didn’t close the airlock depress valve before we tried to repress it, so we wasted a little gas that way. We got that under control and the repress went nominally from then on…   
  
  
Commander Weitz then reported that during the airlock repress the O2/N2 cabin pressurization system again had shown unexpected behavior, probably related to the equalization process between cabin and airlock. “We could hardly hear in here because there was so much gas flowing out of the MO10W. I went down and held my hand on it – it almost hurt to hold it up-close to the regulator.” Weitz then described what had happened when he manually controlled the N2 flow rate. “Sounds like we’ve got a little research on this one,” replied CapCom Jon McBride.   
  
And while two tired but certainly happy spacewalkers prepared to reenter the orbiter’s middeck, McBride asked Commander Weitz to “tell Story and Don they sure made our day down here this morning… or this afternoon. It’s been a long time coming, this EVA. As a matter of fact, it’s been over nine years since we did it last, when Jerry Carr and Ed Gibson did it.”  
  
During the next Indian Ocean Station pass Mission Control and the Challenger crew discussed the evening’s remaining items on the CAP. An Inertial Measurement Unit alignment was cancelled – “Those old IMUs are really hanging in there,” commented Weitz. Another Rendezvous Phasing Maneuver burn was scheduled for 8:53 p.m. CST. After recharging the EMUs the crew would also perform another water dump, leaving H2O tank bravo at a level of 30 percent.  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control, three days, seven hours 23 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (7:53 p.m. CST). We’ve just passed out of range of the Indian Ocean Station and will be reacquiring in about twenty minutes over at Guam. The crew reported that they’re cleaning up after the spacewalk. After stowing some of the gear that they used during that time, they will be preparing for their evening meal; and they need to be recharging the EMUs again, in case they need them for some contingency spacewalk later in the flight. The crew is due to perform another segment in their Rendezvous Phasing Maneuver, segment number four. And this will be in the nature of a nine-foot-per-second burn by the Forward Reaction Control System jets about one hour from now at three days, eight hours and 23 minutes Mission Elapsed Time. The IMUs, the Inertial Measurement Units which are part of the guidance system onboard the spacecraft, are performing very well. And this is not the first time that they have cancelled an alignment of those; they’ve held on very well. Guidance and navigation on this flight has been particularly good and on more than one occasion they have cancelled the opportunity to update the state vector, one element of the onboard guidance. At three days, seven hours 25 minutes Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
About half an hour after the conclusion of the spacewalk, the Mission Operations Computer (MOC) in Mission Control went down for a second time that day. “On this occasion we had up a dynamic standby computer,” explained Flight Director Harold Draughon. “That’s something we do – we have two computers online running in parallel for critical phases. And you could easily argue that EVAs are not that critical in the sense that entry and ascent are critical; but we also do it for rendezvous maneuver burns, EVAs, those kinds of activities. We’ll bring up a dynamic standby machine. We had one up today for the EVA and had not turned it down yet when the online machine went down. And there’s an automatic switchover function that goes on and it refills directly up to the standby, so there was no impact at all to the mission support.” Draughon continued, “The one that Randy had earlier today was prior to bringing up the dynamic machine to standby, so we had a short outage of support there.”  
  
During the next seven-minute orbit 54 pass over Hawaii, CapCom Guy Gardner and Challenger’s Pilot Karol Bobko discussed some UHF comm system troubleshooting. Bobko also received some advisory on a possible NOSL target over South America, as well as on the Monodisperse Latex Reactor experiment, which had been disconnected from the utility power system earlier..  
  
  
CapCom: And I’ve got a note here for some NOSL opportunities over South America, if you’re ready to copy. While you’re getting that ready, I’d just like to confirm that you did the GAS deactivation.  
  
Bobko: Yes, we got the GAS deactivated. And go ahead on those NOSL opportunities.  
  
CapCom: Okay. We’ve got some strong convective storms over South America; the latitude is 25 south, longitude 73 degrees west. We have two opportunities, on orbit 54 just prior to the RCS burn, and that will be at 8 plus 17; and the following orbit at 9 plus 52. They’ll be night settings of course.  
  
Bobko: Okay, that was 8 plus 17… and when was the next one?  
  
CapCom: 9 plus 52 on orbit 55.  
  
Bobko: Okay. I don’t know about the first one. There’s enough reflection off of the windows in here, and you pretty much have to have the upper cabin quite dark – and that may be a little close to the burn to do that.  
  
CapCom: Roger, I understand. And on the MLR – there’s no problem, since it was already shut off, that we unplugged it. But we would like you to plug them both back in and everything will be fine, and then we’ll turn it on prior to entry to stir it up.  
  
Bobko: You’re saying you need them both plugged back in now?  
  
CapCom: Negative. We just need them both plugged in prior to turning it on again.  
  
Bobko: Okay. But can we leave them unplugged and off at this time.  
  
CapCom: That’s correct, Bo.  
  
Bobko: Okay, fine… (Garble) We tried to get that Persian Gulf site the other day with the oil spill and it was covered over with clouds. It was clear around it, but with (garble) and by rain shifts were cloudy.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we copy. And Bo, I’ve got a note here for you guys from Bill Thornton. He wanted to thank the crew for fixing the connector there on the EOG box. We’ve got both data channels now giving excellent data recordings.  
  
Bobko: I’ll pass it. I think Story’s the one that did that.  
  
  
The Electro-Oculogram (EOG) experiment was a Detailed Supplementary Objective documenting the astronauts’ eye movements – one way to investigate the Space Adaptation Syndrome, or space sickness. Asked post-flight if those experiments during STS-6 gave the astronauts some insights into some elements of SAS, Commander Weitz replied, “I don’t know, frankly. It’s because that they were relatively simple experiments, and we were primarily honchoed by Bill Thornton, who is in the astronaut office SAS investigator. And we did the protocol for him, which consisted mainly of some controlled head motions and some eyes-alone motion.”  
  
“Bill is trying to identify the causative mechanism of this,” Weitz continued. “And he keeps saying, _‘Boy, do we have good data now.’_ And I don’t know what that means, because I haven’t had time to talk to him. But I think he’s talking about what he’s seeing and the difference between folks’ response inflight as opposed to what he’s seeing on the preflight and post-flight.”  
  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, for the EMU recharge we prefer that the crew have the helmets off for that… Challenger, Houston, you can ignore that water message; that’s tank Charlie due to the recharge.  
  
Bobko: We just figured that out. That means you want the helmets off for the recharge?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative. Off.  
  
Bobko: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re about 30 seconds to LOS; we’ll see you through Santiago at 8 plus 18.  
  
Bobko: 8 plus 18. Roger.  
  
  
8:30 p.m. CST – “Challenger’s just passed out of range of the Hawaii station. Astronauts Musgrave and Peterson are still recharging their spacesuit backpacks so that those would be ready for any contingency spacewalk that could become necessary later. Mission Control passed up some opportunities for observing lightning storms over South America. The backup-CapCom on this team, the Orbit Team, Guy Gardner, was talking to the crew on that pass. We have about seventeen and a half minutes before the spacecraft comes within range of the Santiago tracking station.”  
  
  
During the Santiago pass the Challenger crew successfully performed the retrograde RPM-4 burn, resulting in a 153-by-148-nautical-mile orbit and received another leak message on the already suspect L2D RCS jet. “We assessed how much we could leak overnight if we elected to leave the jet online or in fact leave that whole manifold online,” Flight Director Draughon later said, “and it’s something like nine-tenth of a pound. That poses essentially no problem at all to us. If the leak were to get larger than it is during the night, the crew would get an alarm, wake up, close the manifold, and it still would not be a problem. We don’t have any expectation that that would happen, or we wouldn’t have left it open.”   
  
At 9:22 p.m. CST the orbiter came into range of the IOS tracking station.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you at Indian Ocean. And we’d like you to close the left manifold number two so we can just get some leak rates; we’ll have you open it prior to LOS.  
  
Weitz: Okay, left manifold two, closed now.  
   
CapCom: And I hope we have just one more pre-sleep switch for you here, back on panel A7.  
  
Weitz: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: The old MAD strain gage switch to PCM enable, please.  
  
Weitz: Okay, that’s complete. I’ve got a note of interest for you Guy… on structures this is.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead.  
  
  
During launch, about one minute into the mission, the astronauts had heard a loud noise inside the flight deck. But so far they neither had been able to find the cause, nor any resulting damage to their spacecraft. – But now they had discovered that the mounting bracket holding two CCTV monitors in position obviously had broken under the strain of lift-off.  
  
  
Weitz: We were all pretty sure we heard a pretty loud noise come from somewhere aft of us and on the left side it seemed like. And we think we found it today while groping around for some other things. There’s a bracket that holds the CCTVs back in their corner. The bracket… it kind of goes in and attaches to the aft bulkhead, and then there’s one other place where it’s been bonded, it looks like… it was bonded to the outer wall of the crew compartment… and those bonded pieces have come loose.   
  
  
“It came demounted and was actually separated,” Flight Director Draughon told reporters about the broken bracket, “the amount was one-third or two-thirds of an inch on the aft bulkhead. It’s not a load-carrying piece of structure. It’s just something that’s attached to the wall, and it’s brand new. The planning team tonight will be looking at the implications of that and what, if anything, to do with it. It’s not a major structure, and I doubt that we’ll do anything to it.”  
  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, you might note your fuel cell spec 68 that your fuel cell two water flow transducer has failed; it’s off-scale low, nothing to worry about.  
  
Weitz: Well, I appreciate the update.  
  
CapCom: Roger, that’s the H2 flow. And Challenger, Houston, we’d like you to open up that manifold now, the left two manifold.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: We’re about to go LOS. The Crystal Team thanks you for a fine day; we’ll be signing off and handing you over to the Amber Team.  
  
Weitz: Okay, we’ve enjoyed it. See you tomorrow.  
  
CapCom: Roger. They’ll pick you up in Guam at 9 plus 16 (9:46 p.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
Musgrave: Houston, MS1.  
  
CapCom: Go ahead, Story.  
  
Musgrave: Before we go over the hill, do you want me to change out the PLSS batteries, or charge them? I’ve already got them down to an input of only 1.3 amps.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we’d like you to change them out.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.

9:26 p.m. CST – “Challenger has just passed out of range of the Indian Ocean Station. We’ll be picking up again over Guam in about twenty minutes. A reminder that about… approximately 10:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, we’ll have a change-of-shift press conference with off-going orbit team Flight Director Harold Draughon and astronaut Bill Fisher, who is familiar with the EVA techniques and spacesuits. That will be approximately 10:00 p.m. this evening Central Time. Handover is now accomplished between the orbit team and the oncoming planning team.”  
  
  
CapCom (Dick Covey): Challenger, Houston, with you through Guam for about five minutes.  
  
Bobko: Roger, Houston. We’ll talk to you in just a minute here…  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle mission control at three days, nine hours 17 minutes, and we’ll be talking to the Challenger through Guam on orbit number 55. The Amber Team is on duty and CapCom is Dick Covey.  
  
Bobko: Houston, I just remembered that that manifold had been turned back on.  
  
CapCom: I’m sorry, Challenger, we didn’t understand… say you did turn the manifold back on?  
  
Bobko: I just had remembered that I was going to ask you what we were going to do about it.  
  
CapCom: Okay, that’s what I was going to come back to you with right now. You have a very, very small leak in L2D, but it shouldn’t cause us any problem over the night period with the manifold open; so we’re going to leave it opened. Should you get a message relative to the left RCS leak during the night, which would mean the rate of leak had increased and we would want you to close the manifold two.  
  
Bobko: Okay, we understand.  
  
CapCom: Additionally, I’d like to confirm that you got three teleprinter messages onboard about two hours ago.  
  
Bobko: Let me check that. I know we got at least one.  
  
CapCom: Okay, the numbers we’re looking for are 26 alpha, 29 bravo, and 30.  
  
Bobko: Roger. We’ve got those messages.  
  
CapCom: Okay. And we need one more clarification on the structures problem that P.J. was briefing us on. We want a clarification on whether it is the TV monitor blanket or bracket.  
  
Bobko: Bracket.  
  
CapCom: Roger, I understand – the bracket.  
  
Bobko: Yes, that’s roger.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, the EVA support people are down here very interested in knowing if the EVA activities have been completed… something about heading for a local establishment…    
  
Musgrave: The internal (garble) at all, but I finished the water recharge, finished the oxygen recharge, finished the other thoroughly cleanup. The only thing I got left to do is replenish that LiOH and the battery (garble) no trouble doing that.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy.  
  
Musgrave: And you do want the batteries replaced, not recharged?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative, Story.  
  
Musgrave: Okay (garble) clean up. All we got to do is change the LiOH cartridge in both, change out a battery in both; we’ll have no trouble doing that.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy. And the EVA support people thank you for the status and they’ll be departing.  
  
Musgrave: Thank them a whole bunch; we’re looking forward to seeing them.  
  
CapCom: Story, the word that they’ve asked me to pass to you is to tell you that they’re glad that you opened that hatch.  
  
Musgrave: No gladder than we are.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re about fifteen seconds to LOS. Our next AOS will be at Santiago at 9:54 (10:24 p.m. CST) and we really don’t have anything now to give you at that point. So unless something else comes up, or you need to talk to us, we won’t plan on bothering you again tonight.  
  
Musgrave: Roger.  
  
PAO: This is shuttle mission control, out of range of Guam now and we’re about 37 minutes away from the beginning of the sleep period. Astronaut Story Musgrave just finishing up some final check points on the EMU systems and a few last-minute items in the pre-sleep period. We’ll acquire signal again in about 30 minutes over Santiago, and it’s doubtful that there’ll be any more voice contact with Challenger until daybreak. At three days, nine hours, 23 minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is shuttle mission control.


	23. STS-6:flight day 5

During the usually quiet sleep periods for shuttle missions it is not unusual for the planning team in Mission Control to request a replay of the day’s downlink television. On Thursday night and Friday morning, however, the spectacular video from Day Four’s spacewalk was replayed not once, but three times. That was one indication of the unbridled glee with which members of the JSC team – employees of Hamilton Standard and the Crew Systems Division in particular – greeted the exploits of STS-6 Mission Specialists Story Musgrave and Don Peterson during and after their flawless four-hour EVA.  
  
10:47 p.m. CST – “Challenger has just completed a pass over Ascension Island. All positions in the MOCR got a look at their data and gave Flight Director Randy Stone the report that all systems are nominal. The Challenger is in a sleep configuration and the crew is into its sleep period now and no indication of any activity onboard the Challenger.”  
  
11:27 p.m. CST – “Challenger is on orbit 56 over Guam right now, downlink data affirming nominal status of onboard systems. Here in the Mission Control Center we are playing back some of the video from today’s EVA operations, giving the Amber Team the opportunity, their first opportunity, to look at the EVA ops. The Amber Team got off-console at 10:30 this morning and only had about an eight or nine hour turnaround before returning to this evening’s shift. So, during that crew rest period… it’s doubtful that any of these flight control team members had the opportunity to watch the EVA… so, these replays of the video tapes represent their first chance to look at the day’s activities.”  
  
12:05 a.m. CST – “Challenger has just completed a pass over Santiago, Chile. All positions report that everything continues to be quiet onboard the system… oboard the Challenger. NASA Select television has been replaying the video tape of the Extra Vehicular Activity performed by the crew earlier today, and the Mission Control Team here in Houston watched part of that with a genuine sense of awe at the quality of the video that was downlinked from Challenger during that process. We are six and a half hours remaining in this sleep period. Challenger on its 57th orbit of the Earth…”  
  
12:57 a.m. CST – “Challenger on orbit number 57, now passing over the tracking station at Guam and all positions in the Mission Control Center are looking at their data.” – 1:51 a.m. CST: “Challenger on its 58th orbit of the Earth; it just had Acquisition of Signal at Dakar and everything remains quiet and nominal onboard the vehicle.” – 2:08 a.m. CST: “NASA Select continues to show replays of the EVA. Meanwhile, in real-time, Challenger is on its 58th orbit of the Earth and everything is quiet and nominal onboard the vehicle.” – 2:35 a.m. CST: “NASA Select television has been replaying today’s Extravehicular Activity. Meanwhile, in real-time, Challenger is on orbit 58 and systems continue to perform nominally, all is quiet onboard the vehicle. About four hours remain in the sleep period.”  
  
4:15 a.m. CST – “Challenger on orbit 59, presently over Australia, but not in reach of any ground station; in fact, we are in a fairly long LOS period presently and don’t acquire again for about another fifty minutes. All’s quiet in Mission Control…” – 5:01 a.m. CST: “We’re two minutes away from Acquisition of Signal through Dakar. It’ll be the first look we’ve had at the vehicle in over an hour, so the flight control team is going to be anxious to get a look at this downlink data. We’ll report their reactions to you as soon as the Flight Director has surveyed the different stations…”  
  
5:06 a.m. CST – “We’re looking at the Dakar data and all stations report normal operations onboard Challenger; about an hour and a half remaining in the sleep period. The off-going team here, the Amber Team Flight Director Randy Stone, his change-of-shift briefing will be conducted at 7:00 Central Time. Our inclination at this point is to propose to cancel that change-of-shift briefing in the absence of any significant activities overnight and during the sleep period. If any news media take exception to that, we encourage you to notify the news center and we of course will make them available. But once again, our inclination at this point is to cancel that briefing in the absence of any significant activity.”  
  
5:53 a.m. CST – “Challenger has just passed by our ground station at Orroral, and the Mission Control team looked at the downlinked data and pronounced the vehicle healthy. Challenger on orbit number 61, about 37 minutes remaining in the crew’s sleep period, and members of the Ascent/Entry Team and Flight Director Gary Coen are now tagging up in the Mission Control Center here for their handover. We are going to go ahead and cancel the change-of-shift debriefing with off-going Flight Director Randy Stone inasmuch as the events of the evening were minor; the crew was asleep when this team came on, and will be asleep when this team goes off, and there weren’t any events during the night.”

———-

 **Friday, April 8, 1983 (Flight Day 5) – A Long Way from Home**  
  
6:27 a.m. CST – “The Merritt Island Launch Area, or MILA tracking station now has Challenger acquired; the spacecraft communicator Dick Covey likely will make the wakeup call in the overlapping Bermuda pass on the 61st orbit. Some three minutes remaining in the scheduled sleep period…”

6:36 a.m. CST – “Acquisition of Signal in about four minutes through Dakar. INCO reports that the UHF downlink on the spacecraft had not been turned on during that pass…”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, this is Houston. Good morning. We’re with you through Dakar for five minutes. – Challenger, this is Houston, and we’re fifteen seconds LOS. Talk to you again through Indian Ocean at 18:29 (6:59 a.m. CST).  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control, Loss of Signal from Challenger through Dakar and Madrid, some ten minutes away from reacquisition through Indian Ocean Station. The crew did not acknowledge two different wakeup calls from CapCom Mary Cleave, off-going CapCom on the Planning Team. – This is Mission Control Houston, we have acquisition through Indian Ocean Station…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, this is Houston. How do you read? – Challenger, Challenger, this is Houston and we’re forty seconds LOS We’d like to remind you to configure for UHF simplex for Yarragadee. We’ll speak to you through there at 18:45 (7:15 a.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Houston, Challenger. Did you call?  
  
CapCom: Challenger, this is Houston. Yeah, good morning… We’d like to remind you to configure your UHF simplex for Yarragadee and we’ll talk to you at 18:45.  
  
Weitz: Alright, thank you.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Right at Loss of Signal at Indian Ocean Station, the crew finally responded to CapCom Mary Cleave’s calls. The systems controllers here reported prior to the wakeup call that the crew was stirring about, using various appliances and systems in the spacecraft. They apparently were just reluctant to answer during the last three passes as they got their breakfast on. Meanwhile, farther out in space, where the Tracking Data Relay Satellite is not quite on station, the spacecraft remains in a stable Sun-oriented mode. It’s too early to do more. We continue to experience roll dynamics anomalies; the team is evaluating these conditions. No action other than maintaining the spacecraft is anticipated today. Plans to maneuver the spacecraft are still being developed and no action is anticipated for at least a week or two. This is from the TDRS director Bob Allen.

————

7:13 a.m. CST – “Roughly forty seconds away from predicted acquisition at Yarragadee, Australia. And we’ll stand by for further word of what’s happening aboard Challenger this morning as the crew begins the day’s activities, primarily concerned with getting everything in its proper place and stowed away for entry tomorrow.” – 7:59 a.m. CST “Loss of Signal at Orroral Valley, a long LOS period across the Pacific to the Merritt Island Launch Area station. Challenger currently in an orbit measuring 147.6 nautical miles at perigee and 152.5 nautical miles at apogee, a period of one hour, 30 minutes 10 seconds. Challenger has a thirty-minute LOS to the next station and this commentator has a thirty-minute LOS for breakfast.” – 8:22 a.m. CST “Loss of Signal at Dakar, Indian Ocean Station in 11 minutes.”  
  
CapCom (Brian O’Connor): Challenger, Houston, with you for eight minutes over Indian Ocean, and I’ve got a switch on panel A7 Lima for you.  
  
Weitz: Okay, we have somebody right there. Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. The MADS is cooled off again. We’d like to turn the MADS stream gage to ON and we’ll give you another call in five or six hours to turn it back off.  
  
Weitz: Wilco. Do you want another star tracker self test on this one, Brian?  
  
CapCom: Stand by… And Challenger, Houston, P.J., we don’t need it. If you’ve already started it, go ahead… but no requirement down here.  
  
Weitz: Okay, no, we haven’t. We’ll… we’ll skip it then.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Weitz: You still there, Houston?  
  
CapCom: Roger, we’re here.  
  
Weitz: These water dumps are really something when you go into and out of sun light.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Wish we could see that. (…) Challenger, Houston, P.J., we see that the target suppress bit was set there for a while. It just went away. We’ve noticed before that in the daytime during water dumps that will happen a lot due to the reflection off the water particles.  
  
Weitz: Yes, that’s what Bo was just talking about. So we’ll just sit here till we go into darkness.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Weitz: It looks like… it looks like when you’re driving at night in a snow storm and your lights see all of the snow particles out in front of you.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Weitz: Like an April night in El Paso. It’s not snowing in Houston today, is it?  
  
CapCom: No, but it was almost cold enough this morning, too.  
  
  
At about 8:55 a.m. CST, while Challenger flew over Yarragadee, Australia, there was more talk about the weather, this time in preparation of another NOSL take during the upcoming orbit 63 Gulf of Mexico pass.  
  
  
CapCom: There’s a couple of very large thunderstorms over the Gulf of Mexico building right now, tops 38,000, same system that dumped eleven inches of rain on New Orleans yesterday. Orbits 63 – this one – and 64 – the next one – will be going right over that area. For orbit 63, a good start for NOSL would be at MET 3 plus 21 plus 04.  
  
Weitz: Okay, that sounds good. I’ll try to get it. The last orbit we went over South America and it was just beautiful and clear. We coasted out and I just had given up and put the camera down. I looked down again and saw a lightning flash. I grabbed it, but I didn’t get as good a picture as if I had just been pointing straight down.  
  
CapCom: Roger that. We’re going LOS for about a minute and we’ll see you at Orroral.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston with you at Orroral for two minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, twenty seconds to LOS. We’ll see you over the States at 21:04 (9:34 a.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Okay. And we’re ready for the CCTV bracket television at MILA.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Weitz: It’s going to be hard to see in that corner, Brian, but we’ll do our best.  
  
CapCom: Roger that.  
  
  
9:03 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Orroral Valley, Australia, 31 minutes across the Pacific, the next acquisition at Merritt Island Launch Area. The crew of Challenger at that time will turn one of the onboard cabin television cameras toward a TV monitor mount that apparently came unglued during the launch phase. Nearing the end of orbit 62 in this first flight of Challenger, the crew setting about to put away all of the equipment that had been, has been used in the last four days.”

Well, today was, of course, the pre-entry day,” Flight Director Gary Coen summed up during the afternoon change-of-shift briefing. “”There was a lot of work of stowing the various things in the vehicle. I’m sure you got to see on TV in fact how tightly things are packed. I think as far as the work that went on today, one of the most important things that we worked on was that we got some information that had to do with the bracket that broke on the Closed-Circuit TV monitors. The TV monitors are mounted on the flight deck, aft of the flight deck, on the bulkhead.”  
  
“The history behind that is that when the crew noticed that that bracket was broken, they told us _‘By the way, during the launch phase we heard kind of a popping noise behind us,’_ and they were kind of putting two and two together and had concluded that yes, indeed, that popping noise was most likely the bracket coming loose from the bulkhead. The bracket itself is bonded onto the bulkhead by some means. I think bonding means that it’s glued or epoxied or something. There are really two brackets on there. The other bracket has four bolts on it. The combined TV monitors weigh about 40 pounds.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. We have Acquisition of Signal through Merritt Island Launch Area tracking station.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston, let me know when you get TV, Brian. This is a terrible place to try to get light on with this TV system so you can see what’s going on.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We have TV now and we’re looking at a shadowy area there right over your head.  
  
Weitz: Oh, wait a minute… let us back out so we can show you which bracket it is… Okay, Brian, it’s this aft corner back up in here. Can you see it? It’s the one that’s on the back. As you look at the CCTV bracket in the upper right corner, there’s a bracket on the backside where it was bonded to the bulkhead.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we can see that.  
  
Weitz: And that’s the one that came loose. But you can see where it is. Can you move it to the left a little, Don? We’re going to have to try some hand-held, Brian. I know it’s going to be a little wavy, but we’re going to have to do it. And we’ll zoom in on it here…  
  
CapCom: Roger. We’re getting a much better shot of it now.  
  
Weitz: I don’t know if you can see, but that dark area… let me see if, the dark… go and get a pencil for a minute…  Do you hear me?  
  
CapCom: Roger, we got you.  
  
Weitz: I can’t see, Don. There. Okay… Can you see my pencil? Well, there’s the bracket that came loose. Can you see it moving around?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm. We can see that moving.  
  
Weitz: Okay. And that’s where it is now, and then the dark area where my pencil is on the wall, that is where it was bonded before. You can see how far away they are. They’re pretty much an inch apart right now.  
  
CapCom: Yeah, that’s a real good shot. The EECOM folks down here got a good view and they think they know what the problem is now.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: They’re going to look at it anyway.  
  
Weitz: Alright. We’re not concerned about it. As you know that is a pretty sturdy bracket and we think it’ll stay sturdy coming in. Is that all the TV you need?  
  
CapCom: Roger. That’s all we need on that, P.J. Thank you very much.  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir.

CapCom: And we’ve got a picture of Story down by the middeck with the CFES in the background.  
  
Weitz: Story is setting up our stuff for our next operation that you’re looking at down there. We’re going to have to reset our flight deck next. We left Story alone with the TV cameras.  
  
CapCom: Roger that. And we can tell from his movements that he’s probably finished with his EVA prep… post-EVA prep.  
  
Weitz: Well, I’m not sure. Brian, when you get a chance, how about giving us the rundown on the forecast weather at Edwards for tomorrow.  
  
CapCom: Wilco.  
  
Weitz: … Including predicted surface winds and a probable runway.  
  
CapCom: We’ll get that together for you right now… And Challenger, Houston, P.J., if you’re ready to copy, I’ve got some wind… some weather and winds for you for tomorrow.  
  
Weitz: Yes, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Edwards for end of mission, 5,000 scattered…  
  
Weitz: Wait, hold a minute… Alright, go ahead, Brian.  
  
CapCom: Roger. That’s Edwards, 5,000 scattered, winds variable at five, runway 22, 40,000 port winds will be west-southwest at 60 knots max.  
  
Weitz: Alright, all sounds very nice.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, if you’ve got… if you can get a chance, we’d like an update on how the post-EVA prep went. And also, when we went LOS yesterday during the EVA, Story was taking a… getting ready to take a look at the OMS pod for those tiles and we didn’t hear what he saw, if anything. We’d like a report on that.  
  
Weitz: Yeah. Nothing much new, except that he said that there were pieces of frizzy, and there are a couple or three people talking; what else did you ask?  
  
CapCom: Roger. The status of the post-EVA entry prep...  
  
Weitz: Oh, yeah. I just went down and was the human lever for Story to use to try to close some of those lockers. You cannot… you know, when they pack this vehicle for flight, we really should not pack stuff like LCVGs and other things that are essentially vacuum-packed at one-g, and that barely fit in a locker cause they’re a real bear to get back in when you’ve used them and you try to get them back in at zero-g. That’s the biggest problem we had, getting the stuff reasonably back in the places they came out.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Copy that.  
  
Weitz: But other than that, the EVA doctor has been plugging along and doing everything. We’ve finished up the battery recharging this last night, and post-EVA prep is finished.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Thank you very much… And Story, you need a haircut.  
  
Musgrave: Is that a Marine Corps regulation haircut?  
  
CapCom: Yes, sir. And Challenger, Houston, for Story. We’re wondering if you ever got that bag back onto the EMU…  
  
Musgrave: …even though it’s not as good as I want it to be, it’s at zero. The third EMU is totally fixed now, the arms are buttoned down. I was unable to get the bag to cover the neck ring and the lower part of the suit, but it’s totally secure.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Copy.

11:00 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Hawaii, Buckhorn in a minute and 50 seconds, and on this pass over Florida, there should be additional opportunity for thunderstorm viewing with the Night/Day Optical Survey of Lightning, or NOSL.”  
  
  
CapCom (Roy Bridges): Challenger, Houston’s with you over the States for twenty-one minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Okay. Paul was asking what kind of light flashes I had one night, and it was just a bright burst of white light, something like a flashbulb.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, I have a question for you regarding the PCS system, if you have a moment.  
  
Musgrave: Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We’re still trying to see if we can track the incidents to any activities that you’re doing onboard. And we wanted to ask each of you if you can remember what you were doing during this last incident of high flow.  
  
Musgrave: Okay, P.J.’s getting on the line now.  
  
Weitz: Do you need to talk to each one of them?  
  
CapCom: No, we just were interested in the last one that happened, oh, about an hour ago.  
  
Weitz: Okay, what do you need, Roy?  
  
CapCom: Well, we’re just wondering if… what you all were doing at the time to see if we can relate the incident to anything that’s going on onboard. So we’d just like to have a report of what each of the crewmembers was doing at the time.  
  
Weitz: Yeah, hold on a minute… Okay, we thought we had a big lead to the WCS because Don was down there. It turned out all he was doing was getting out some cleanup gear. So he was not using the WCS, so I can’t tie it to any of that, Roy. We were… Story was getting… he was setting up for some audiometry. Bo was trying to figure out what had happened when his second wireless comm meter of the day had failed… and, you know, I can’t tie it to anything. It just started flowing, made the noise. We got an alarm. I looked up at the overhead panel and the flow on the panel read zero. I then called up the spec, but then it read 1.3. You know we had already had the N2 flow master alarm in the (garble). By the sound of that it was flowing into there at a pretty good rate. At about the time of spec 66, the cabin pressure showed 14.9 and the airlock pressure showed 15. I decided it was time to put off the regs and wait awhile. But we cannot tie this to any event.  
  
CapCom: Roger. And thank you for your report, P.J.  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir… Hey, Roy, there’s one thing now… wait a minute… We were flowing at the time, I noticed, we were flowing O2 and we had switched to N2 when the problem started. I had forgotten that.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Good.  
  
Weitz: And I think the flow rates on the O2 were pretty nominal. You know, they were down around one, or thereabouts, maybe a half to one and a half. Anyway, not surprising because they didn’t get in my eye, but I do remember now at the time that Bo and I talked about, well, there it goes when it does the old O2 and N2 shift, when the controller shifted over to N2.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Understand.  
  
Weitz: And if you think of anything else that we can try to reconstruct, give us a holler.  
  
CapCom: Well, we’re really grasping.  
  
Weitz: Well, I am too.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, could you give us a few details on Bo’s WCCU problems?  
  
Weitz: I’ll let him talk.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Bobko: How do you read?  
  
CapCom: Five by.  
  
Bobko: Okay, this morning I got up and replaced the battery in one and it worked just fine. Nd all of a sudden it went dead and I looked down, and the little light that’s on the unit was not on. So I went and put another battery on it and that didn’t make any difference. So I got another one and…  
  
CapCom: Another battery or another unit?  
  
Bobko: I got another unit and started to use it. And it worked fine until I started to get some static, and that was the time I replaced the battery on it an we were up here talking about it when the problem happened with the PCS system. So I just put it, wrapped it up and put it away, and I’m on the sideline now.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy. And we’re about twenty seconds LOS for a short keyhole. We’ll be picking you up through MILA here very shortly. And when we pick you up, if you could tell us the numbers of the units that failed, we’d appreciate it… Challenger, Houston, we’re out of the keyhole now and with you through MILA.  
  
Weitz: We’re getting a good view of Matagorda Island, Roy. The airport stands out quiet markedly to the naked eye.  
  
CapCom: Yeah. We finally got some good weather this morning.  
  
Weitz: Yeah. And you can make out with the naked eye Scholes Field also. The puffy clouds really make a difference. There’s no clouds over Galveston Island which is why Scholes is easy to find, The puffy clouds break things up just enough that… there I just finally found Ellington.  
  
CapCom: Well, from all of us, we’ll send you a big hello, a big wave.  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir. We’re waving back. We see you. You see us?  
  
CapCom: Well, we’re straining right now, but it’s kind of tough.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re thirty seconds LOS; see you at Dakar at 22:55 (11:25 a.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Okay.

 

 

 

11:21 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Bermuda, four minutes away from reacquisition at Dakar, Senegal. During this just completed stateside pass, the crew of Challenger reported on some high oxygen and nitrogen flow characteristics of the cabin pressurization system that had set of an alarm. They had experienced similar incidents before with this particular system. Bobko’s, Karol Bobko’s wireless mike went dead and he had to go hard-line. They also reported being able to see the runways on Matagorda Island and Scholes Field in Galveston coming directly over the Texas coast, No report of being able to see thunderstorms in Florida on this orbit. There were two successive orbits over Florida in which the Night/Day Optical Survey of Lightning experiment could be operated.”

 

CapCom: Challenger, Houston’s with you at Dakar and Ascension for ten minutes.

Bobko: Okay, Houston, how do you read the PLT?

CapCom: You’re five by.

Bobko: Houston, do you read the PLT?

CapCom: PLT, Houston, you’re five by. How me?

Bobko: Okay, this is WCCU C. The first WCCU we had the problem with was A, the one dead… and the second one was B, the one with the static.

CapCom: Okay, we copy… Challenger, Houston, thirty seconds LOS; we’ll see you at Botswana at 23:13.

Bobko: Roger, Houston, see you there.

 

At 11:43 a.m. CST came AOS at Botswana tracking station. CapCom Roy Bridges had some recommendation for the PLT and a question for the EVA doctor…

 

CapCom: Challenger, Houston’s with you at Botswana for four and a half minutes.

Bobko: Okay, Houston, read you loud and clear,

CapCom: Okay, you’re five by. And Bo, we have a suggestion for you on your WCCU if you can listen a second.

Bobko: Okay.

CapCom: Just in case you should need another unit later on, our recommendation would be to switch the antenna from A to B… try that.

Bobko: Okay.

CapCom: We think the bravo unit should work okay once the antenna’s switched.

Bobko: Okay.

CapCom: And Challenger, Houston. Is Story on the comm?

Musgrave: Yes, I sure am.

CapCom: Story I have a question for you. When you put the EMU batteries in the “Return to Houston” bag, did you tape the terminals?

Musgrave: The used batteries are not in the “Return to Houston” bag; they’re back in the locker.

CapCom: Roger. Does that include the dead batteries?

Musgrave: The _two_ dead ones. I only changed out the batteries on two EMUs, so I have two used batteries.

CapCom: Story, I’m talking about the light, the EMU light batteries.

Musgrave: Okay. They are still in the lights themselves.

CapCom: And what about the four dead EMU light batteries that you found on the first day’s inspection?

Musgrave: I labeled all of them with gray tape.

CapCom: Okay. My only concern here, Story, and the reason I was asking the question… I should just get to the bottom line and tell you that: They are concerned if you’d put them in the “Return to Houston” bag without taping the terminals, because there is a possibility of inadvertent discharge. And the discharge could cause some venting. So in the vent that you put them somewhere where they can move around and you did not tape the terminals, they recommend you do that.

Musgrave: Okay. Each one of them is in its own foam compartment.

CapCom: Okay. Great.

Musgrave: So, they’ll be alright.

CapCom: Sounds great, Story. Thank you.

Musgrave: That’s good thinking though…

Weitz: Okay. Roy, we just wanted to say that so far we’ve done our best to put our glasses on and that this mission has been brought to you by the Geritol Bunch… F-Troop… We didn’t have a chance to rehearse this very well… Okay. We were very pleases to find this stashed somewhere in the vehicle and it just does bring home that old adage, as that space leader John Young has said, that spaceflight is really for old folks… and Bo…

CapCom: That’s great.

Weitz: And maybe that’s why we try a little harder.

CapCom: Turn it down just a little to get the glare off of it… There, we have _“111 Years of Aviation Experience.”_ Alright.

Weitz: Well, we try to please.

 

 

  
“All of you have certainly given F-Troop a good reputation… finally,” said CapCom Roy Bridges and the conclusion of the lighthearted exchange between Mission Control and the Challenger crew. “Like I say, we did try,” replied Commander Weitz.

 

CapCom: Well, it was certainly a great effort. We’ve all enjoyed working with you through the whole flight and we’re looking forward to a great entry tomorrow morning.

Weitz: I should say, that sounds like last time. I hope you’re going to be around at least one more time. I talked to Brian earlier about the weather; it sounds pretty good for Edwards tomorrow.

CapCom: Oh, it’s going to be a beautiful day out there and we’re not expecting any problems at all. We’ve got light winds and sunny skies.

 

“We did a weather review earlier this morning and had a weather update this afternoon,” Flight Director Gary Coen said during the 3:30 p.m. CST change-of-shift briefing. “It looks like the weather’s going to be in good shape for a landing tomorrow at Edwards Air Force Base.”

2:47 p.m. CST – “The orbiter Challenger is out of range of Ascension. We’ll be picking up over Botswana in about three and a half minutes. The crew is continuing with their cabin stowage. They will be preparing for a Rendezvous Phasing Maneuver number five in about thirty minutes.”

The astronauts also performed a series of RCS burns, observing the related effects inside and outside the vehicle. Depending on the size of the fired jets they reported at times they were not able to detect the burns at all, at times they were getting nearly continuous popping noises. Having looked out of the flight deck windows, Story Musgrave even reported he could see debris being jarred loose and pouring out in the payload bay, and that the vehicle was twisting and shaking as the RCS jets fired.

“The jet L2D that I had reported, I guess I haven’t been here for a couple days,” said Gary Coen, “I reported two days ago has leaked again. It successfully passed the hot fire that we had planned to do and it was used subsequently and it started leaking fuel again. Right now that leak has stopped. We haven’t taken any particular action to secure it other than we’re not using the jet right now. It appears that the prognosis for that is that we probably won’t use that jet for entry.”

As to the final  Rendezvous Phasing Maneuver that afternoon, Associated Press reporter Paul Recer asked Flight Director Gary Coen to describe the orbit of this phantom that they were trying to rendezvous with.

Coen: We’ve picked various places in orbit and try to get there. And we call those things phantom places. I think it’s just a bit of slang that we use in the control center. We say, well, we’ll go here and do a phantom rendezvous to that spot.

Recer: Okay, where was here today? Can you describe it in some manner? Altitude above the Earth, or whatever…

Coen: It’s a point in space at a certain time, and we try, we do our best to get there.

Recer: Okay, just time then, is it.

Coen: And a place, a place and a time. We have a thing called a state vector. A state vector is a description of what the vehicle… it’s a description of where the vehicle is and how fast it’s going. And what the state vector amounts to is three position components and three velocity components, and a time. And all those things taken at once describe the trajectory of the vehicle. If you know the right mathematics they’ll tell you where it’s going to be pretty soon. So. What we basically try to do is achieve a certain state; and we’re trying to learn how well we can predict our ability to achieve a certain state.

Recer: For us pedestrian mathematicians, can you tell us approximately over what point on the Earth this was?

Coen: I can’t, because I’m a pedestrian myself. I can’t take these three components and these other three components and figure them out.

 

 

 

 

 

5:06 p.m. CST – “The crew is continuing with their housekeeping and stowage activities, getting everything squared away, and they have about four hours remaining before they are put to bed tonight, presently working on unbolting the brackets that hold the two TV monitors on the aft crew station. And we’re about five minutes away from picking up communication again over Hawaii on this orbit number 68.” – 5:23 p.m. CST: “Challenger is out of range of the tracking station at Hawaii and we have almost 40 minutes before we reacquire again and that will be over Botswana in southern Africa. This is orbit number 68.”

6:22 p.m. CST –  “In the recent pass over Indian Ocean Station the crew was relaxing a little bit with some music, taped music they had brought along. The crew is currently proceeding with the cabin stowage and the housekeeping functions, all the routine chores the day before entry, and they are currently scheduled to be in their meal period. Very little left on the timeline this evening – they have about two and a half hours before they are due to be put to bed for the night… IMU alignment and a fuel cell purge, and that’s about all that’s on the calendar before sleep tonight. On orbit number 69, we’re at four days, five hours and 53 minutes Mission Elapsed Time. This is Mission Control.”

8:20 p.m. CST – “Challenger on orbit 70 and the crew has about 40 minutes remaining before they go to sleep. We’ll be reacquiring over Hawaii in about four minutes. In the meantime we have some preliminary numbers; these are updates on the entry events. Several people have been asking for the expected times for the various events in the entry phase tomorrow, just prior to landing. We have those numbers now, a new set of those numbers. We will be reading those out here shortly. We would anticipate cancelling the 11:00 p.m. Central Standard Time press conference this evening, unless there is considerable interest that causes us to have one. We will, for that reason, be putting these numbers a couple of times this evening to be sure that everybody that needs them gets them. And if there are additional questions, please check with the news centers.”

“We are expecting – these will be Central Standard Times – deorbit burn, this will be a two-engine burn of the OMS engines, to occur Saturday at 11:57 Central Standard Time, 11:57 a.m. Central Standard Time. That will take place at latitude 28 degrees 35 minutes south, 67 degrees 57 minutes east longitude, delta-V, a change in velocity, of 288 feet per second. Then we will reacquire communication with the spacecraft next at that point over Yarragadee. That will be at 12:01 and 26 seconds, but those things will vary as we proceed along overnight here and tomorrow, so I’ll just read the minutes out except on the more critical ones. And we’ll have Loss of Signal through Yarragadee at 12:08 and approximately 34 seconds, 12:08:34 Central Time. Entry interface begins at 12:22:59, or about 12:23 Central Time; begin S-band blackout at 12:25; end blackout at 12:40; during that period of blackout we would probably miss the Hawaii pass. We would normally have acquired over Hawaii at that time, during that blackout. We would then again first reacquire over Buckhorn at 12:40:56 or approximately 12:41 p.m. Central Standard Time. The spacecraft enters Terminal Area Energy Management interface at 12:47, acquires the Heading Alignment Circle at 12:50, 12:50:12 according to the very precise times here. But again, those will probably change as we move along through the night, but those are the current numbers that the computers run out. Prefinal will begin at 12:51, 12:51:36 again for the prefinal, and touchdown weight on main gear at 12:53:18, or 12:53 Central Standard Time.”

 

CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, we’ve got about one minute left here at Hawaii; we’ll let you guys get to sleep. We’d like to wish you happy landing tomorrow, and on behalf of the Orbit Team we’d like to thank you for an outstanding mission.

Weitz: We’d like to thank you gentlemen for an outstanding mission, too. We’re looking forward to seeing you in a couple of days.

CapCom: Roger that.

PAO: This is Mission Control, at four days, eight hours Mission Elapsed Time (8:30 p.m. CST). The Challenger’s just passed out of range of the tracking station at Hawaii on orbit number 70. The crew is beginning to power down the CRTs onboard, among the things that they do before going to sleep, currently scheduled to be awake for about another 29 minutes – but it’s a pretty flexible schedule.  
   
To repeat what we were saying earlier during that Hawaii pass, we are considering cancelling the 11:00 p.m. Central Standard Time press briefing, the change-of-shift press conference that would normally take place at that time, we do have some updated numbers for the entry events tomorrow, and I’ll be reading those off shortly. Again, that would hopefully take the place of having to hold this late-night press conference. If that should not cover all the questions, we could handle perhaps any overflow through the news rooms and we’ll try to get the answers for your questions this evening, just to read off some of these entry events – and these are in Central Standard Time.

The deorbit burn would be a two-engine OMS engine burn would occur according to the present schedule at 11:57 a.m. Central Standard Time, that’s just a little bit less than one hour before actual touchdown that they do that deorbit burn out over the Indian Ocean. The actual location of that on the ground track is at latitude 28 degrees, 35 minutes south, longitude 67 degrees, 57 minutes east; the change in velocity by that engine burn is 288 feet per second.

Next event is the reacquiring over Yarragadee in Western Australia. That tracking station picks up communication with the spacecraft at 12:01 Central Standard Time, 12:01 p.m., and loses communication at 12:08. Entry interface begins at 12:22 and 59 seconds, or roughly 12:23. Again, these numbers will be revised somewhat very late in the flight, as we get down to the last couple of hours; and even then the actual event may vary by a number of seconds from the latest updates you should get a couple of hours before landing. So these numbers are the best estimates at the current time based on current path of the spacecraft and time.

The blackout will begin at 12:25, 12:25 and 31 seconds approximately, and that would end at 12:40:03, or about fifteen minutes later. We would probably miss the Hawaii pass there, it would normally come in between those two times, between the beginning and the ending of that blackout. We should be out of communication with the spacecraft at the time, because the reentry heat that creates an ionized layer of the atmosphere around the spacecraft interrupting our communications.

We should reacquire the first communication after blackout, should be through the Buckhorn station at 12:40, 56 seconds, or about 12:41 p.m. Central Standard Time. The… for the technical people, the Terminal Area Energy Management interface is at 12:47. The spacecraft will then pick up the Heading Alignment Circle at 12:50, 12:50 and 12 seconds. Prefinal begins at 12:51 and a half, and touchdown, or weight on the main gear, at 12:53 Central Standard Time.

Now, if there are some entry events that are important to you that you didn’t hear the times on, please let the newsrooms know and we’ll try and get those for you. The ground track of the spacecraft crosses the California coast practically directly over Santa Barbara, California. Some of the additional bits of information that may be of interest to you relating to these figures:

At entry interface, which is really the point at which the spacecraft really begins to enter the atmosphere at 12:23, the velocity is 24,395 feet per second, altitude at that point is 418,000 feet and range is 4,049.9 miles. At the time that the blackout begins, velocity is at 24,487 feet per second, altitude is at 335,000 feet and the range is at 3,453 feet… excuse me, 3,453 miles. At the end of that blackout, the spacecraft is 514 miles out, at an altitude of 181,000 feet and moving at 12,500 feet per second approximately. The Challenger will be picking up the Heading Alignment Circle, that’s about 17 miles out, at an altitude of 32,000 feet and begins prefinal at 13,000 feet or about 13,800 feet; that’s 7.8 miles out… They’ll be coming into Runway 22 at Edwards. There will be light and variable winds about five knots, so we won’t be expecting much in the way of being able to get a crosswind to test on this… Rollout will be about 10,000 feet estimated and we will have a braking test on this landing.

9:38 p.m. CST – “The Challenger is about nine minutes away from being within range at the Guam station, but the crew is in the sleep configuration at this time; all the CRTs are powered down, so that they are not making inputs into the computer; it’s one of the last things they do before going to bed for the night. Challenger is on orbit number 71… and it is four days, nine hours and eight minutes into the Space Shuttle flight number six.”  
   
Suddenly, the tranquility was broken by the urgency of Challenger’s alarm system. General Purpose Computer number two had failed. It was serious, but not critical. The commander and the pilot attempted to find out what had gone wrong. As soon as they reached contact with the next tracking station – at Guam – Paul Weitz relayed the problem to Houston and explained to CapCom Dick Covey what they had done so far to solve it.

 

Weitz: …We’ve done most of the pocket checklist procedures… that is we have assumed that we only need one GNC GPC. We are holding in the first block of the mal procedure on page 95-5. We have realigned IMUs 2 and 3 to one and that’s about where we stand now, Dick.

CapCom: Okay, we copy that. And let us discuss it just a second and we’ll get some words back to you.

Weitz: Okay. And as you can probably see now, the IMUs 2 and 3 are holding down.

CapCom: Okay, we copy that… Challenger, you can reselect IMU 2 and 3 at your convenience.

Weitz: Yes, we did reselect them before we aligned them.

CapCom: Challenger, Houston.

Weitz: Go ahead.

CapCom: Roger. What we would like for you to do is go to GPC FRP 3 page 5-53 of the mal, and do the steps alpha and bravo, which are the hardware dump and the software dump. And that’s all we’ll need for you to do tonight. That will give us a chance to evaluate the GPC while you’re asleep.

Weitz: Okay, so you intend to put us to sleep on GPC 1.

CapCom: Say gain, Challenger.

Weitz: I say, you intend to see us through the night on GPC 1.

CapCom: That’s affirmative.

 

9:58 p.m. CST – “We’ve heard some communication with the crew there on that last pass over Guam. They were awakened, that is if they had got to sleep by now, by that alarm – one of the redundant set of four GPCs, General Purpose Computers, had gone offline. It’s been shut down; apparently that single computer did fail. That’s one of a set of four. It only takes one computer to actually fly the spacecraft. They, the flight control teams here in Mission Control, will be analyzing that this evening to determine why that computer failed.”

“There is no significant impact other than rerouting some of the functions that were shared by that computer as one of a set of four to one of the other computers. Normally, two of the set of four would be handling the avionics, the guidance onboard, monitoring the Inertial Measurement Units. And one of those computers has shut down and its functions are then restrung to another computer. The crew has a short malfunction procedure to go through and then can get back to sleep. That will mean, unless they are able to reinitialize that computer… that will mean that entry will be flown with three computers instead of four online. And, of course, there remains the Backup Flight System, backup computer, which is a fifth independently developed and programmed computer, which runs in sync with the redundant set of four. So, actually you have five computers, any one of which could fly the spacecraft.”

 

PAO: We’ll be coming up over the Santiago, Chile, tracking station in about two minutes and could conceivably have communication with Commander Paul Weitz on this flight, if he has completed his malfunction procedure as called for, shutting down that failed computer and loading that data onto the OPS recorder, which would be looked at by flight controllers here later. We may or may not hear from them and we expect that he would be going back to bed shortly – if indeed he had already gone to sleep. We were only about an hour, not even an hour into their scheduled sleep period. At four days, nine hours 54 minutes Mission Elapsed Time (10:24 p.m. CST), this is Mission Control Houston.

Bobko: Houston, Challenger, are you there?

CapCom: That’s affirmative, Challenger, Houston standing by.

Bobko: Okay, you ready for some times on the dump?

CapCom: That’s affirmative.

Bobko: (Garble)

CapCom: We can just barely read you, Bo. Hardly at all… you’re very weak…

Bobko: Okay, on the hardware dump that was on the OPS recorder two track one; it’s running forward at six percent, and we started at 9:24; the software dump recorder two track one forward at 32 percent at MET 9:32.

CapCom: Okay, we copied all the data, Challenger.

Weitz: Okay, we would like to certainly get rid of at least the GPC warning light, which we could inhibit back there (garble) power switch. Or would you rather not to power down GPC yet?

CapCom: Stand by… Challenger, Houston, we’re about a minute to LOS here at Santiago. You have a go to take the GPC 2 power to off… And this will be our last transmission to you tonight, unless y’all have something else for us.

Weitz: Okay, good enough; see you in the morning. Are you going to be on tomorrow?

CapCom: We’ll be here about that time; we might have the entry team talking to you first.

Weitz: Okay. Thanks for the quick help, Dick, appreciate it. See you tomorrow.

CapCom: Thanks.

PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, four days, ten hours Mission Elapsed Time (10:30 p.m. CST). During that pass over Santiago we saw the closeout of that brief episode with the failure of General Purpose Computer number two… Commander Weitz told to go ahead and power that computer off. That would shut off that caution and warning light that was on there and allow the crew to get back to sleep.. Ground controllers are planning on powering that computer back up in the morning and seeing if they can reinitiate it. It failed about fifty minutes ago. That is one of four computers that normally would be operating to fly the spacecraft. It’s a redundant set; its functions are taken over by one of the other computers and there is no impact to the operation of the flight. Should the computer not be able to be reloaded again tomorrow, if it is actually failed completely, then the flight entry can certainly be run on three computers, and can indeed be run on one computer. As would happen should there be any total failure of that primary system, there is one backup computer, independently programmed, developed and built to not share the same characteristics as that primary set. Naturally it can fly the spacecraft on its own as can any of the computers in that set of four.

Just a final notice, we have cancelled that 11:00 p.m. Central Standard Time press conference. We have provided the entry numbers for tomorrow, and if you somehow managed to miss those, they are available in the JSC news room and perhaps some of the other space center news rooms as well. The Amber Team with Flight Director Randy Stone has taken over, and they will be watching the spacecraft tonight. The crew will be getting some sleep and be up tomorrow, making their final preparations for entry, with their scheduled touchdown on Runway 22 at Edwards tomorrow afternoon Central Time at 12:53, 12:53 p.m. Central Standard Time. At four days, ten hours three minutes Mission Elapsed Time, this is Mission Control Houston.

 

11:28 p.m. CST – “Challenger on its 72nd orbit of the Earth, overflying the tracking station at Guam. The flight control team has had a look at the data and pronounced the vehicle healthy and stable. Five and a half hours remaining in the sleep period.” – 12:33 a.m. CST: “Challenger on its 73rd orbit of the Earth, right now presently positioned right above the Suez Canal. Four and a half hours remaining in the sleep period. All continues to be quiet onboard the vehicle and the crew has seen an apparently uneventful night since the General Purpose Computer alarm about two hours ago.” – 1:00 a.m. CST: “We have just had a data check at Guam, and all positions have given a go.” – 1:54 a.m. CST: “We just had a data take over Dakar on orbit number 74, and the flight control team has verified normal operations onboard Challenger.”

2:58 a.m. CST – “Challenger is on the descending node of the 75th orbit right now over the South Pacific. We’re in the middle of along LOS period of almost an hour and a half. It’s been nearly an hour since we lost signal in Dakar. We don’t reacquire until we go to the Dakar site again in about 29 minutes. There’s been no judgment yet on the nature of the failure of General Purpose Computer 2, GPC number two, onboard the vehicle. They did get a good software dump and are looking at the software and hardware configuration presently. And no evaluation is available yet, but a team of IBM people here in Building 30 are looking at that data presently. There’s a change in the time of change-of-shift debriefing with the Flight Director. Handover has been moved up an hour and the Entry Team will come to the control center at 4:30, begin an hour-long handover accordingly. Off-going Flight Director Randy Stone will be available for questions at 5:30 a.m. Central Time, as opposed the earlier advertised time of 7:00 a.m. Central Time. Once again, the change in time of the availability of off-going Flight Director Randy Stone: In case there’s any interest in directing questions to him, he will be available at 5:30 a.m. Central Time.”

3:27 a.m. CST – “Just a minute away from Acquisition of Signal through Dakar, which will be our first look at the vehicle in almost an hour and a half. And the Mission Control team here is poised to analyze that downlinked data as soon as the stream is acquired through the Dakar site. We’ll report the status to you just as soon as that data has been looked at and Flight Director Randy Stone has polled the Mission Control team.” – 3:30 a.m. CST: “The status check in the control room here resulted in a go from all stations. The crew has about an hour and a half remaining in its sleep period. Data indicates that the cabin temperature inside Challenger is 73 degrees, which is about four degrees cooler than we’ve seen it on the past overnights. That could be an artifact of having that GPC number two power down;  the GPCs generate about… generate a little heat. They’re 600-watt machines and that temperature differential could be due to that GPC power down, or it may just be that the crew neglected to turn the cabin temperature up to full heat for the overnight.”

4:13 a.m. CST – “Challenger is over Australia right now, but its path doesn’t carry it over any of the ground stations. We’re in orbit 76 and this is another long LOS period and no data since the Dakar pass. And we won’t acquire any data again until about 43 minutes from now to MILA. Still no word on the nature of the failure of GPC number two. Just to recap that briefly, about ten minutes into the sleep period the crew received a caution and warning alarm announcing the failure of GPC number two. The ground commanded the software and hardware data dump; we got a good dump from the vehicle and since that time, for about the past hour, that data has been under scrutiny of an IBM team here in the Mission Control Center and as of now there are still no conclusions as to the cause of that failure. Obviously the team’s hope is to produce some sort of conclusions that will generate a workaround and try to get that computer back up online for entry activities tomorrow morning, although it’s certainly not mission-critical. And in case it’s not going to be brought back online, there’s a workaround that’s been designed by the Data systems engineer here in the Mission Control Center, which has the effect of stringing some of the data flow around through the other three General Purpose Computers and bypassing the failed GPC number two.”

4:15 a.m. CST – “We’re anticipating good weather at the landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, California – clear skies, light winds. Challenger is now on orbit 76.” – 4:18 a.m. CST: “We’re desperately trying to find somebody interested in a change-of-shift briefing with the off-going Flight Director Randy Stone. Again, the press conference with Mr. Stone originally planned for 7:00 is going to be moved up due to a change in the handover schedule. He’ll be available now at 5:30 a.m. Central Time in case anyone has questions for him. If we don’t get some response within about the next half hour, we’ll probably go ahead and cancel that change-of-shift briefing with Randy Stone.”

4:50 a.m. CST – “We’re about seven minutes away from Acquisition of Signal through Bermuda on orbit 76. There’s ten minutes remaining in the sleep period, and we might anticipate the wakeup call through Bermuda if there’s any indication that the crew is up and around. If the food warmers are not on and CRTs are not turned on and there’s no indication that the crew’s up, it’s doubtful that the Mission Control team will initiate the wakeup call. In the absence of any demonstrated interest in interviewing Flight Director Randy Stone, despite a sincere interest to, or sincere efforts to drum up some interest, the change-of-shift debriefing with the Flight Director will be cancelled. Flight Director Jay Greene and his flight control team have tagged up here in the Mission Control Center and will take this next pass.”

 

 

 


	24. STS-6:landing day

**Saturday** , **April** **9** , **1983** ( **Landing** **Day** ) – **The** **Proof** **of** **the** **Pudding**

CapCom: Good morning, Challenger. Welcome to entry day.  
  
Weitz: Thank you. How are you doing this morning?  
  
CapCom: Just great. And we hear you loud and clear, and we have a GPC message for you here when you are ready to copy.  
  
Weitz: No way. Let me rub some of this sleeping sand out of my eyes. I’ll be with you in a minute.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Just wanted to give you a leg up on that test, on the TPRs…  
  
Weitz: Okay, I understand… Okay, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. GPC 2 fail recovery; check GPC 2 output to normal; check mode to halt; power to on.  
  
Weitz: Wait a minute… second step… let me interrupt you. Say again. Was that output to normal?  
  
CapCom: Okay. After output to normal, mode to halt, then power on. Then perform steps delta and echo of malf FRP 3, which is on page 5-53.  
  
Weitz: Okay. We got that.  
  
CapCom: And that’s all we’ve got for you on this pass.  
  
Weitz: Okay. Do you want that done right away?  
  
CapCom: We just wanted to be sure you got that first thing. You can do it at your convenience.  
  
Weitz: Oh, good.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re going LOS; we’ll see you at IOS at 16:56 (5:26 a.m. CST).  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Loss of Signal at Dakar and Madrid, Indian Ocean Station is eleven minutes away. The wakeup music piped up from Dakar was “Ode to the Lions,” as rendered by Rusty Gordon. This is a Penn State song referring to the Nittany Lions of Penn State University, which is Paul Weitz’ Alma Mater. He earned his bachelor in Aeronautical Engineering at Penn State in 1954. Final day of the flight starting for the crew; they go into their deorbit preparations after breakfast and are looking at the deorbit burn at about 11:57 a.m. Central Standard Time. We’ll be landing at 12:53 p.m. Central, at Edwards Air Force Base. We’ll return at Indian Ocean Station in ten minutes. This is Mission Control Houston.  
  
  
5:30 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Indian Ocean Station. Not much response from the crew there, but the data processing system engineer here in Mission Control reported to the Flight Director that General Purpose Computer, or GPC number two, is back up and running, back online carrying strings one and four of the system management jobs… acquisition again at Yarragadee, Australia, in about ten minutes...” – 5:40 a.m. CST: “The crew’s currently reviewing the teleprinter messages they received during the night and shortly will be cooking breakfast.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you at Yarragadee for six and a half minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, Houston, be with you in a minute… Houston, GPC 2 recovered; it’s back in redundant set.  
  
CapCom: Roger, we copy that.  
  
  
5:55 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Orroral Valley, 30 minutes across the Pacific to reacquisition at MILA, Merritt Island Launch Area and tracking station. As the crew of Challenger prepares for today’s entry, the teleprinter message they mentioned that had been in the menu sent up that they claimed not to have received, labeled as the parting shot, is a computer teleprinter reproduction of the F-Troop guidon flag; likely that’ll be retransmitted later in the day.”  
  
Then, about half an hour later, during the eleven-minute pass with overlapping coverage at the MILA and Bermuda tracking stations, several teleprinter messages that did not get through complete on earlier transmissions, were retransmitted. And you could hear this memorable exchange between Challenger and Mission Control…  
  
  
CapCom: We have three more teleprinter messages we’ll be sending up over Bermuda real shortly. You can look for 40 bravo, 49 alpha and 48.3… 40 bravo is the entry summary, 49 alpha is the weather message, 48.3 is the average age of the crew, and is also that signoff message we were telling you about before.  
  
Bobko: Okay, wise guy. But I didn’t have any place to write; how about saying the message numbers again…  
  
CapCom: Roger. 40 bravo, 49 alpha, 48.3; and if you make…  
  
Bobko: 40 bravo, 49 alpha and 48.3.  
  
CapCom: Okay. I’m glad you got it this time. If I had to read it again it would have been 48.4.  
  
Bobko: Roger… And Houston, Challenger, is your message… is your TPR message transmission completed?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative. We just completed it.  
  
Bobko: I’ll go down and take a look at them.  
  
  
At 6:41 a.m. CST, when Challenger came into range of the Dakar tracking station, Karol Bobko reported there was some trouble with the teleprinter down in the middeck.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you at Dakar, standing by for five minutes.  
  
Bobko: We seem to have a real problem up here right now. The paper roll light is on on the teleprinter. We’ve turned the teleprinter off because it’s stuck in a high-power mode again; we’ll turn it on at your command.  
  
CapCom: Roger, stand by… Challenger, Houston… Bo, we’d like for you to turn the DC utility power off for the teleprinter on panel A15.  
  
Bobko: Okay, it’s off now and I’ll leave it off until you tell us to turn it back on.  
  
CapCom: Roger… Challenger, Houston…  
  
Bobko: Okay, Houston.  
  
CapCom: And Bo, can you confirm the numbers so that the teleprinter messages that you did receive before you had this problem.  
  
Bobko: Stand by. We’re doing the star tracker self testing.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
  
6:47 a.m. CST – “LOS at Dakar, twelve minutes to Indian Ocean Station, the Challenger crew currently doing an Inertial Measurement Unit alignment on schedule in the flight plan, as the final preparations for entry begin.” – 6:58 a.m. CST: “Indian Ocean Station acquiring in less than 30 seconds, orbit number 77 for Challenger, the Flight Director currently getting a briefing from the weather station here in Mission Control on today’s landing site weather as well as other landing sites around the world… We have acquisition now at IOS.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you standing by at IOS for eight minutes… And Challenger, Houston, when you can we’d like you tell us what the last teleprinter messages were that you got up there before you had the teleprinter problem.  
  
Peterson: The last message we got were the three that you called up. Stand by one… The messages we got were 40 bravo, 49 alpha and 48.3.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Thank you… Challenger, Houston, Don, we’re through with the teleprinter then. That’s it.  
  
Peterson: Okay. Are you telling me I can go ahead and disconnect and stow all that stuff?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative.  
  
  
7:09 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Indian Ocean Station, Yarragadee in six minutes. The Challenger crew has now… or is in the process of stowing the teleprinter; it’s done its job for the five days of flight. Cabin repressurization, or topping off the cabin pressure is complete. The spacecraft is in the tail-sun attitude for about the next two and a half hours. End of mission weather at Edwards Air Force Base is predicted to be a layer of scattered clouds at 25,000 feet, winds out of the southwest at twelve knots, which is just slightly off the nose on Runway 22. To recap the situation on the General Purpose Computer – GPC 2 is back online and will stay online unless it fails again, in which case it would be retired from service and the other computers carry the load.” – 7:28 a.m. CST, shortly before LOS at Orroral Valley tracking station:  
  
  
Weitz: Houston, we all appreciate message 48.3.  
  
CapCom: Roger that. The planning team had fun making it… Challenger, Houston, 45 seconds to LOS here; we’ll see you at 19:29 (7:59 a.m. CST) over the States.  
  
Weitz: 19:29, over the States. Thank you.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Loss of Signal at Orroral Valley, 30 minutes Loss of Signal until next station at Merritt Island Launch Area, or MILA. One comment during the Orroral pass is that the crew on Challenger did finally receive teleprinter message 48.3, and it was appreciated. That, of course, was the final one in the teleprinter messages for this flight, and was a computer graphic sort of depiction of the F-Troop guidon. Also, in an earlier teleprinter message, an entry summary was uplinked to the crew giving the approximate times of ignition and delta-V for the deorbit burn – 292 feet per second retrograde, cross range steering will take out 378 nautical miles to the north from the regular ground track, with landing at approximately 10:53 Pacific Standard Time. Winds are forecast to be ten knots at 230 degrees, which is southwest. It will be an overhead approach and a turn to the left around the Heading Alignment Circle on to Edwards Runway 22; the lakebeds at Edwards are still no-go for landing. At day four, 19 hours one minute, this is Mission Control Houston.

CapCom: Challenger, Houston, when you are finished with the vent test, we’ve got a couple of fairly long notes to talk to you about the jets and the GPCs for entry.  
  
Weitz: Okay, let me get out the deorbit prep and I’ll write it in there, Brian.  
  
CapCom: Okay. First page we’ll talk about is page 1-11.  
  
Weitz: Okay… Fantastic view of sunny beautiful Guantanamo Bay today…  
  
CapCom: That’s super.  
  
Weitz: That’s probably before your time.  
  
CapCom: My father told me about it.  
  
Weitz: Ha, I did not need that… Okay, page 1-11. Go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Yes, sir. We’re talking about how we are going to string today, given that we have lost GPC, GPC 2 once before. The nominal stringing for page 1-11, the deorbit prep, string one to GPC 1, string four to GPC 2, three stays with 3, and string two on GPC 4; mass memory two to GPC4, and CRT 2 to GPC 4. If GPC 2 fails pre or post burn, then we want you to string as follows: GPC 1 will have string two…  
  
Weitz: Hey, wait a minute, Brian. It would make it a lot easier if you could read me the strings and tell me which GPC is going to have the string.  
  
CapCom: Okay. I’ll get the strings first. If GPC 2 fails, do not try to recover GPC 2, restring as follows: string two goes to GPC 1, strings one and four to GPC 3, and string three to GPC 4. You should power down GPC 2 and do not attempt recovery. And rationale for that stringing is to protect for as many things as we can (…)  
  
Weitz: Okay. Well. You guys thought of more things than we do. We didn’t come up with that restringing in the event of a failure, but we were close enough, I guess.  
  
CapCom: And we’ve got a long note for you on… a fairly long note for you on the jets. You might want to use a pad or paper for this so you can talk it over.  
  
Weitz: Okay. My jets person is with me… Wait and see if he’s ready to copy.  
  
Bobko: Yes, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We told you a little bit on the mission summary message this morning, 47 bravo, about L1U and L2D. And these are just more words on the same subject. Prior to transition to ops 3, increase the left pod fail limit to three. This will allow for two additional auto jet deselects during entry.  
  
Bobko: Hold it a minute… That was prior to ops 3 transition?  
  
CapCom: You can do that any time prior to ops 3.  
  
Bobko: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And procedure for that on spec 23, left RCS item 2 execute, and jet fail limit item 4 and 3 execute.  
  
Bobko: Yes, we got that.  
  
CapCom: Okay, next part – since L1U and L2D are deselected for entry, you should reselect those jets for the following reasons: reselect only for loss of one or both of the other left jets in the same direction.  
  
Bobko: Okay.  
  
CapCom: And this failure can be any jet fail on/off or leak. It could be a manifold closure for any reason, or it could be for a loss of FA MDM or GPC…

Shortly after 8:30 a.m. CST, while the astronauts aboard Challenger were closing down shop and preparing to come home, out at Edwards Air Force Base chief astronaut John Young was airborne in the NASA 903 T-38 jet, making the first of two scheduled weather surveys. He reported no clouds in the landing area, no turbulence that he could feel from the surface up to 35,000 feet. “There are no clouds in the sky all the way to the coast, except for the low cloud cover in the Los Angeles Basin,” Young reported. The wind was blowing right down Runway 22 at 12 knots. “In general the weather’s just beautiful,” said Young.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you over Indian Ocean for seven minutes.  
  
Musgrave: Roger, Houston, we’re standing by to close the doors.  
  
CapCom: Roger. And we’re looking… Challenger, Houston, you’re go for payload bay door closing.  
  
Musgrave: Roger, Houston, we’ll close them.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we see you did not get the aft closed indication; recommend you look at the scallop.  
  
Musgrave: Yes, it’s well below the target line, Brian. The scallop is at least an inch below the bottom point of the target line.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Go ahead with the bulkhead latching. And we’ll see you over Australia.  
  
Musgrave: Okay.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, Loss of Signal at Indian Ocean Station. Next station is Yarragadee in six minutes. The crew just got the left door closed, the left payload bay door closed. And by the time we reacquire at Yarragadee, they likely will have indication that the right-hand door is closed and latched. This is Mission Control Houston, day four, 20 hours 15 minutes.  
  
  
Challenger’s payload bay doors had been closed completely during the LOS period at exactly 8:36:20 a.m. CST.  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, with you at Yarragadee for eight minutes.  
  
Musgrave: We got the door closed, and we got everything but the center ones of the latches closed. And they’re closing now.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Musgrave: Everything is zipped up, Brian. You saw the most off-nominal thing of that whole sequence was that no indication of closed in one end of the port door.  
  
CapCom: Roger. Understand.  
  
Musgrave: And the latch that was going to make first contact, I would say, was latch number 12; and it was aiming at the horizontal line, about a 1.8.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy, Story.  
  
  
9:03 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal for the final time this mission at Orroral Valley, near the end of orbit number 78. Systems engineers here in Mission Control confirm that the payload bay doors are closed and latched. The crew is starting their final alignment of the Inertial Measurement Units prior to deentry… reentry. Next station Buckhorn in about 25 minutes across the Pacific.”  
  
10:01 a.m. CST – “LOS at Dakar, very brief pass at Botswana voice relay station in eight minutes. During the States and Dakar pass, the two maneuver pads were read up to the crew for today’s deorbit burn and the landing sequence, entry sequence. The vehicle weight at deorbit burn will be 197,426 pounds… the time of ignition, day four, 23 hours 25 minutes zero seconds, about one hour and 53 minutes from now… total delta-V of the deorbit burn, 292.2 feet per second – retrograde, obviously.”  
  
10:19 a.m. CST – “Seven minutes from reacquisition through Yarragadee toward the end of orbit number 79. To recap the entry sequence of events with times and Mission Elapsed Time: Ignition for the deorbit burn, day four, 23 hours 25 minutes zero seconds; entry interface, day four, 23 hours 53 minutes 27 seconds, at a range from Edwards of 4,043 nautical miles; begin blackout, day four, 23 hours 55 minutes 59 seconds, 3,447 nautical miles up range from Edwards; end blackout, day five, zero hours ten minutes 29 seconds, 514 nautical miles up range; touchdown, day five, zero hours 23 minutes 42 seconds. These are current numbers being generated in the entry elapsed time display here in Mission Control. They’re likely to change plus or minus a few seconds as different tracking stations massage the numbers somewhat in the data base here.”  
  
  
CapCom (Roy Bridges): Challenger, Houston’s with you at Yarragadee for eight minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger. Well, we feel we’re ready in all respects.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy. Ready in all respects… And Challenger, Houston, I’ve got a couple of notes for you, depending on what you’re doing right now. One’s on the deorbit burn flight rule cue card, and an update on the left pitch jets note that we gave you earlier.  
  
Weitz: Okay. Stand by. Is it pressing? I tell you what I#d like to do. Bo is down getting his harness and boots and that on now, and I’d just wait until he’s back up on the loop. We can talk about it then.  
  
CapCom: No problem. Give me a call. If we can’t catch it here, we’ll catch it at Hawaii.  
  
Weitz: Okay. When do we get to Hawaii?  
  
CapCom: Hawaii’s coming up at 22:23 (10:53 a.m. CST).  
  
  
10:36 a.m. CST – “Loss of Signal at Yarragadee, Hawaii 17 minutes from acquisition, which will be early in the final orbit of this mission. The crew is donning their personal equipment, harnesses, et cetera for the entry and landing.”

Meanwhile at Edwards AFB, chief astronaut John Young had changed aircraft, making weather observations and flying a runway approach with an STA, or Shuttle Training Aircraft.  
  
  
CapCom: NASA 946, Houston… NASA 946, Houston.  
  
Young: 946, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger, John. We’ve got a couple of things for you and we are standing by for your weather input.  
  
Young: Okay. The surface winds at take off were two-two-zero at 18, gusts at 23; at 1,000 feet two-four-three at 22; 2,000 feet two-seven-six at 16; 3,000 feet two-six-three at 19; 4,000 feet two-seven-five at 15; 5,000 feet three-one-four at 12.  
  
CapCom: Okay. We copy.  
  
Young: And 10,000 feet two-three-three at 18; 15,000 feet two-five-zero at 25; 20,000 feet two-five-six at 38; 25,000 feet two-seven-eight at 45; 30,000 feet two-eight-seven at 36; 35,000 feet two-nine-zero at 24. And those are above ground level.  
  
CapCom: Okay. We copy.  
  
  
John Young reported that the NASA 946 experienced very light turbulence all the way up and all the way down. Based on Young’s observations of high wind velocity close to the surface and data taken by a weather balloon, Mission Control was expecting to have a fairly high speed brake setting on the orbiter. They were planning on recommending to the crew that they manually close the speed brake at 2,500 feet.  
  
  
Young: Ours closed automatically and we have 50 percent speed brake. I’m not sure how realistic that is in terms of the way this thing handles in the wind, though.  
  
CapCom: Roger. The weather man has given us an update on the winds. They believe that at the landing time… that we have… that we will see a slight trend down in the wind velocity. And we will probably see something on the order of two-zero-zero to two-two-zero degrees 13, gusts to 18 knots. Later in the day they will anticipate the wind would go as high as 15, gusts to 25. So, that would probably apply for a one rev go-around situation.  
  
Young: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Well, based on what you have seen so far, John, what’s your feeling on going with current conditions?  
  
Young: I think yeah, they are go. The only cloud decks are over in the LA basin, and they’re starting to creep over the edge. But they generally do that, up that way.  
  
CapCom: Okay. Well, we’ll be keeping in touch with you. Right now we copy your go. And keep us advised on any cross wind problems or any other things that come up.  
  
Young: Sure do that.  
  
  
10:48 a.m. CST – “That was an exchange between John Young in a Shuttle Training Aircraft at Dryden, and Roy Bridges here in Mission Control. Young reporting on the turbulence and wind velocities and directions at different altitudes, also the one run he made using the aiming point that’s being recommended to the crew based on the current head wind conditions virtually right down the runway.”  
  
  
CapCom: NASA 946, Houston. We’ll be dropping off to talk to the orbiter at Hawaii now. And we’ll be talking to you again after Bermuda LOS at 9:22 (a.m. PST). Over.  
  
Young: 946, copy.  
  
  
During the six-and-a-half minute Hawaii pass shortly before 11:00 a.m. CST, CapCom Roy Bridges asked the Challenger Commander, “You ready for a weather update?” Weitz replied, “You bet. Go ahead.”  
  
  
CapCom: Okay. Well, you got a beautiful day down at Edwards, no clouds. It is getting a little windier than what we had mentioned to you earlier. Winds are currently running two-zero-zero to two-two-zero degrees at 15, gusts to 22. And at your landing time, we’re predicting same direction 13, gusts to 18… little bit lower. And we’re recommending that you use the close aim point. We’re also recommending that you manually close the speed brake at 2,500 feet.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: The STA’s reporting negative turbulence of any significance, and all other systems are go out there. You got a big crowd waiting to watch you touch down.  
  
Weitz: Okay. Thank you.  
  
Bobko: The interconnect return is complete.  
  
CapCom: Roger. And Challenger, Houston, P.J., as you know, we have no PAPIs on the close aim point. There is a small spit of dry land to the left of the centerline that points to the close aim point.  
  
Weitz: Well, my trusty autopilot ought to get me there.  
  
CapCom: Roger that.

————-

Judy Muller (CBS/JSC): In a little less than an hour from now the crew aboard the shuttle Challenger will turn the ship around 180 degrees, so it’s flying backwards. That will put the two rear maneuvering engines into position to brake the vehicle. After the engine burn the shuttle will be turned around, nose first again, and once it’s slowed down it will lose altitude to begin the descent to take them home. All preparations for the landing today at Edwards Air Force Base have gone very smoothly. The crew has been stowing away gear, checking out systems aboard the orbiter, and closing those 60-foot-long doors to the cargo bay. A large crowd of spectators is gathering at the landing site in the California desert; my colleague David Dick is also there with this report:

David Dick (CBS/Edwards): Here on the Mojave Desert the wind has been kicking up this morning; officially it was clocked at 12 knots a few hours ago, and that was twice as strong as yesterday morning. But now, less than two hours before the scheduled landing of Challenger, the weather forecasters here tell us the headwind has increased to 17 knots, and there are gusts in excess of that. But that’s surface wind; it’s calmer aloft. But what this means in terms of the landing is that the same runway will be used, the hard-surface main runway 22, but when Challenger comes in, it will land farther down the runway, which is incidentally a 15,000-foot runway. Conditions for landing continue to be go. David Dick, CBS News, Edwards Air Force Base, California.

During the next 19-minute pass between Buckhorn and Bermuda tracking stations, beginning at about 11:04 a.m. CST, Pilot Karol Bobko prepared the activation of the orbiter’s hydraulic system and performed a gimbal check. Auxiliary Power Units APU-2 and 3 were expected to be activated at 12:10 p.m. CST, about thirteen minutes before entry interface.

       
  
Bobko: Houston, are you there?  
  
CapCom: Roger. We had a short keyhole.  
  
Bobko: You ready for a gimbal check?  
  
CapCom: While we’re standing by a reminder, do not check the left secondary.  
  
Bobko: Okay. But I’m going to check the right secondary.  
  
CapCom: Roger that.  
  
Bobko: Houston, I haven’t turned off those hydraulic SEP pumps. I intent to do that just before the APU start. Is that acceptable?  
  
CapCom: That’s good, Bo.  
  
Bobko: Okay. The APU fuel tank valves are open, and I have three grays… and I’m getting ready to close them.  
  
CapCom: Okay. It looked good, Bo. Good prestart… Challenger, Houston, we had a good gimbal check.  
  
Bobko: Okay. Understand that secondaries on the left side are not usable at all. Is that correct?  
  
CapCom: That’s affirmative.  
  
Weitz: Confirm you want to use the close aim point.  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm. We’re recommending the close aim point… Challenger, Houston, you have a go to load your targets.  
  
Weitz: Thank you… Houston, the OMS burn preps are complete.  
  
CapCom: Copy, burn prep complete… Challenger, Houston, we sent you a new vector and we’d like for you to go ahead now and do another target load on pass and BFS.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, your onboard solution looks good to us.  
  
Weitz: Boy, I don’t know what I’d do if you’d said something else.  
  
CapCom: We’d all be in trouble… Challenger, Houston, we’re fifteen seconds LOS. We’ll see you at Dakar at 22:57 (11:27 a.m. CST), configure LOS.  
  
Weitz: Okay, see you there.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, LOS at Bermuda; Dakar, Senegal, tracking station voice relay station coming up in about four minutes…  
  
CapCom: NASA 946, Houston.  
  
PAO: Roy Bridges making a call to John Young in the Shuttle Training Aircraft, NASA 946. We’ll listen in on that.  
  
CapCom: NASA 946, Houston.  
  
Young: 946, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger. We’ve got a couple of minutes here before we get to Dakar. Everything is looking good onboard, John. They are ready to come home. We want to get an update from you.  
  
Young: Okay. We just did a pass that normalized to 185 knots; touchdown was 2,450 feet down the runway.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy.  
  
Young: The 1,000 foot winds were two-four-five at 24, the 2,000 foot winds two-six-zero at 24, the 3,000 foot winds two-four-nine at 22, the 4,000 foot winds two-five-zero at 20, and the 5,000 foot winds two-seven-one at 10. The speed brake setting at 3,000 feet was about fifty percent again.  
  
CapCom: Okay, we copy.  
  
Young: Yes, the turbulence is unnoticeable, so it’s pretty good for landing.  
  
CapCom: Okay, that’s good news, John. Thank you very much. And we’ll be talking to you after Ascension; and as far as you’re concerned we’re go, right?  
  
Young: That’s affirmative. The only clouds that you can see are the ones on the other side of the mountains, LA basin.  
  
CapCom: Okay. We got a good TV shot of the field. Looks clear as a bell.  
  
Young: It’s beautiful.  
  
CapCom: Thank you very much. And I’ll talk to you in, let’s see here… about 9:49 (a.m. PST).  
  
Young: Okay. The HUD camera setting is F16.  
  
CapCom: Okay, copy F16. Thank you.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Currently the helicopter out at Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, flying along parallel to Runway 22, where Challenger will touch down. So, we’re clear at the landing site. Dakar about a minute ten seconds away from reacquisition; the Challenger crew all buttoned up with all systems ready for landing. And we’re some 29 minutes away from ignition of the deorbit burn over the Indian Ocean.

CapCom: Challenger, Houston’s with you through Dakar and Ascension for eleven minutes, configure AOS.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, the setting for your HUD camera is F16.  
  
Bobko: Okay, F16 now.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, P.J., I’ve got a couple of flight notes; still got a switch on panel alpha 14.  
  
Weitz: Okay, what do you need?  
  
CapCom: Okay. I need the RCS OMS heaters forward RCS switch to off.  
  
Weitz: Okay. That was the forward RCS heaters; you want them all to off?  
  
CapCom: That’s just one switch in the upper left corner.  
  
Weitz: Okay. Say again, please.  
  
CapCom: RCS OMS heaters forward RCS switch, one of them, to off.  
  
Weitz: Okay, we got you.  
  
CapCom: And Challenger, Houston, a note. When using the OMS helium pressure versus delta-V chart on the XCG calculator.  
  
Bobko: Roger.  
  
CapCom: You need to subtract 100 psi from the tank reading, and use that value on the chart to get the delta-V available.  
  
Bobko: Roger.  
  
PAO: Flight Director Gary Coen polling the positions here in MOCR for go for deorbit.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, a reminder. When you’ve closed out the WCS on ML31C we need the vacuum vent isol to close, and the nozzle heater off.  
  
Weitz: Vent doors are going closed.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy. Vent doors closed. And did you copy the WCS closeout notes?  
  
Weitz: Yes, sir. We’ll do that when we close it out.  
  
CapCom: Okay, copy. And you have a go for the deorbit burn.  
  
Weitz: Okay, thank you. It’s on at 302.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’ve updated your state vector. We’d like another reload past BFS.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
Bobko: Houston, on that subtracting 100 psi from the helium pressure?  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
Bobko: if I look at 30 percent as an example, am I supposed to subtract the 100 and get 26, and that shows I have a 145 feet per second capability now?  
  
CapCom: Stand by… that’s affirm.  
  
Bobko: Okay. So we have about 290 feet per second on board?  
  
CapCom: That’s correct, Bo.  
  
Bobko: Thank you.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we’re thirty seconds LOS; we’ll see you over Botswana in five minutes, configure LOS.  
  
Weitz: Roger. See you there.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Loss of Signal at Ascension Island, reacquisition coming up in four minutes at Botswana voice relay station…  
  
Weitz: Houston, are you still there?  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston’s with you through Botswana now for seven minutes.  
  
Weitz: We just looked at our onboard pad and we’d like to confirm the EI-5 attitude as 199, 315, 024.  
  
CapCom: That’s what I read you. And stand by, we’ll re-check it… Challenger, Houston, the attitude that you read down is correct. And one note for you: The hydraulic thermal conditioning at EI-11 will not be required.  
  
Weitz: Super. Thank you.  
  
CapCom: and we’re standing by.  
  
Weitz: See, the reason we asked that is that we looked back at the (garble) pads that are in the checklist and found out that they were quite different.  
  
CapCom: Roger. I think that most of the other ones were for the next rev.  
  
Weitz: Check.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, we are thirty seconds LOS; see you at Yarragadee at EI-22. Have a good burn.  
  
Weitz: We’ll do our best. Thank you… and thanks for your help getting us ready this morning.  
  
CapCom: It’s been a real pleasure.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, Loss of Signal at Botswana voice relay station; next station will be Yarragadee in twelve minutes; ignition for deorbit in about six minutes. We should have confirmation at Yarragadee that the burn was successful. 

———-

At 11:55 a.m. CST, as Challenger flew south of Mauritius Island, the two minute 26 second OMS-5 burn against the direction of flight provided a retrograde velocity of 292.2 feet (89.1 meters) per second. Having passed this point of no return, the STS-6 crew now would come home “to the well-remembered shore.”  
  
12:01 p.m. CST (10:01 a.m. PST) – “Acquisition of Yarragadee coming up in about 40 seconds. We’re some 52 minutes away from touchdown at this time and should get confirmation of a deorbit burn here at Yarragadee.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston’s with you at Yarragadee for seven minutes.  
  
Weitz: Roger, sir. It was a good burn right down the pipe and smooth all the way.  
  
CapCom: That’s great news.  
  
Weitz: I gave everybody a last vote at 30 seconds if they didn’t want to go around one more time, and all I got was a blank look. Nobody wanted to do that.  
  
CapCom: Well, I’m sure you’d like to have a lot more time in space, but maybe we can get you another flight real soon. I think that’s a better way to go.  
  
Weitz: Okay.  
  
CapCom: … Challenger, Houston, we’re twenty seconds LOS and recheck configured LOS; looking forward to seeing F-Troop coming over the hill at Buckhorn in about 30 minutes.  
  
Weitz: So are we, babe.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, Loss of Signal at Yarragadee. There’s an outside possibility we may get some data and perhaps voice from the Hawaii pass since the spacecraft’s ground track takes it almost directly over that station. That remains to be seen. Some 42 minutes until touchdown, entry interface in 13 minutes 10 seconds, which will be day four, 23:53:27… Challenger is on its way back after five days in space on its maiden flight. The burn report made over Yarragadee by Commander Paul Weitz said it was a good burn, right down the pipe and smooth all the way. He found no takers on his offer to go around one more time. This is Mission Control, day four, 23:41 (12:11 p.m. CST / 10:11 a.m. PST).

12:14 p.m. CST (10:14 a.m. PST) – “The convoy for safing and deservicing the spacecraft is in position to move on out to the runway after landing. Some 100,000 people are estimated to be at Edwards to view the landing. And a TV chase aircraft, a T-38, is taxiing into position for takeoff at Edwards. We’re some 40 minutes now away from touchdown of Challenger.”  
  
  
CapCom: NASA 946, Houston.  
  
Young: 946, go ahead.  
  
CapCom: Roger, John. They had a good burn; they’re headed your way in good shape.  
  
Young: Okay. We made another run, and I’m convinced that that’s just the way we’re set up here …  
  
CapCom: Okay. So the energy’s looking fine now?  
  
Young: Yes.  
  
CapCom: Thanks a lot. That makes us feel a lot better.  
  
Young: Me too.  
  
CapCom: And 946, I’ll be off the air for just a moment to do a convoy UHF check, and then we’ll be back with you and be standing by.  
  
Young: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Convoy Commander, Houston on the UHF. How do you read?  
  
Convoy: Houston Flight, this is Convoy Commander on UHF. Read you loud and clear. How me?  
  
CapCom: Convoy, Houston, you’re also five by… Chase, Houston, radio check. How do you read?  
  
Chase: Chase, read you loud and clear, Houston.  
  
CapCom: Roger. And you’re five by.  
  
Chase: Chase copy.  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston, coming up on the predicted time of entry interface. That’s when the spacecraft comes into the sensible atmosphere at approximately 400,000 feet. At that time the range to the spacecraft will be 4,043 nautical miles…  
  
  
Challenger flew at an angle of 40 degrees when she reached entry interface exactly at 12:23:27 p.m. CST (10:23:27 a.m. PST), entering the communications blackout zone.  
   
  
PAO: Mark entry interface at this time. Velocity 24,399 feet per second, altitude – as I mentioned earlier – is around 400,000 feet when the first molecules of atmosphere begin to collide with the spacecraft. Four minutes away from acquisition at Hawaii, that is if the S-band can punch through the ionized layer of atmosphere around the spacecraft. Touchdown now 29 minutes away… This is Mission Control Houston; the Challenger should be in blackout at this time. Blackout began at about 3,447 nautical miles up range from Edwards at an altitude of 335,570 feet. 26 minutes away now from predicted touchdown…  
  
CapCom: NASA 946 and Chase, we’ll be going off frequency for a moment and monitoring as the orbiter goes over Hawaii; we’ll be back with you in about ten minutes.  
  
Young: 946, roger.  
  
Chase: Chase, I copy.  
  
PAO: This current blackout period is predicted to run until ten minutes, ten and a half minutes past the hour. They’re past day five, zero hours in Mission Elapsed Time. For about another eleven minutes… velocity now down to 23,330 feet per second, range to the runway 2,345 nautical miles. We’re getting data from Hawaii… range 2,000 nautical mile from touchdown… and Hawaii has had Loss of Signal, intermittent signal from the spacecraft as it passed over that station… range now 1,760 nautical miles, altitude 250,828 feet.  
  
  
“Our whole entry was in daylight, so we didn't get to see the magic stuff that people later saw of the wake,” Paul Weitz said in a March 2000 interview. “Have you seen those pictures of the wake taken from the top windows? Darth Vader, they call it, the thing goes in and out and fluctuates, and it must really be fantastic.”

Commander Weitz flew Challenger through a series of hypersonic and supersonic maneuvers, which expanded data in the three areas where hard flight data was lacking: orbiter lateral stability, RCS capability and rudder authority. In all, Challenger completed the normal three hypersonic S-turns that all previous flights had completed to reduce energy and refine the guidance for the final landing phase, and in addition flew eight flight test maneuvers, which required about 30 separate jet firing or control surface inputs to gather required data.

The first Programmed Test Input (PTI), as the eight flight tests were called, began at 261,000 feet altitude with the vehicle flying at 16,700 miles per hour. Weitz applied a right aileron pulse maneuver, followed by a right roll jet burn, then a right yaw jet input. As Challenger responded to Weitz’ commands and automatic software, she flew through the denser layers of the atmosphere. The vehicle slowed and dropped as test inputs followed almost immediately after each other, turning the vehicle to the left, then the right, then back to the left again, using RCS jets in the higher reaches of the atmosphere and control surfaces in the lower areas.

Challenger flew a slightly higher angle of entry during the fall from Mach 12 to Mach 3 in order to provide a wider range of test data than that supplied from the first five flights. A maneuver at Mach 9 failed, but the other PTIs were successful.

—————

Meanwhile, unknown to anybody on the ground, Mission Specialist One was doing some testing of his own… indeed, on himself. “I was conducting my own experiment. The whole flight had been so totally exhilarating and I was on such a high that I decided to stand throughout reentry. It's my nature to press and push, to go beyond what's expected,” Story Musgrave said later. “I was having fun, as always.” British space writer Ben Evans reveals in his book _Space Shuttle Challenger – Ten Journeys into the Unknown_ that the ever-inquisitive MS1 later got an earful from his boss for the stand-up stunt:  
  
“During Challenger’s reentry, quite contrary to standard operating procedures, Musgrave unstrapped and stood up inside the flight deck. It would lead to a reprimand from chief astronaut John Young after landing. Weitz admitted to Musgrave’s indiscretion at the post-flight press conference. _‘Sure,’_ he told journalists, _‘Story did it on the spur of the moment, but we all knew what he was doing and nobody quarreled with him – at least until now.’_ For his part, Musgrave would explain his reasoning as a desire to show that an astronaut could indeed stand during the transition from weightlessness to terrestrial gravity.  
  
_‘I had my Hasselblad camera and was taking some photos,’ he said. ‘Also, I wanted to prove that I could do it. That’s important if an astronaut ever has to leave the flight deck and go below to throw a switch or circuit breaker. I wanted to show that the cardiovascular system doesn’t have any problem going back into gravity and you don’t have to be strapped down. My standing was smooth and steady and it shows that the shuttle is maturing. Standing up throughout reentry, instead of being strapped down, was the perfect end to a perfect trip.’_ ”  
  
“It was something Story did on the spur of the moment,” Mission Commander Weitz explained during the April 22 post-flight crew conference. “But no one said any quarrel with him, up to this point. We debriefed management up through and including General Abrahamson and Mr. Weeks this morning, and were straight forward on that. They know what happened.”  
   
“From a third-seat point of view, I was only standing up a couple of times during entry where I had to reach something, or wanted to reach something,” said Mission Specialist Donald Peterson. “But the vehicle felt more stable to me under a g and a half than it normally feels if you stand up on an airliner. There was less motion, there was less turbulence, there was less vibration. It’s essentially solid as a rock. And I think Story stood up essentially all the way to the ground, and I think we’re both confident that you wouldn’t have any problem, even climbing down to the middeck and climbing back up if you wanted to do that.”

——-

CapCom: NASA 946, Houston’s back with you… NASA 946, Houston’s with you again…  
  
Young: 946, roger. We made our last run and normalized to 185 knots; it’s 2,600 feet down the runway at the close aim point.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy, John. And we got a little bit of data coming over Hawaii from them; we couldn’t talk to them, but all the systems were looking good, real good.  
  
Young: Outstanding.  
  
CapCom: Chase, Houston, radio check.  
  
Chase: Loud and clear, Houston:  
  
CapCom: Okay, you’re still five by.  
  
Chase: Copy.  
  
PAO: Some five minutes remaining in the blackout period before predicted end of blackout. Currently the range is… the display is frozen. The range should be around 514 nautical miles.

PAO: Western Test Range stations at Vandenberg have picked up Challenger.  
  
Cernan: This is always great to hear from NASA.  
  
Bergman: Lynn, we just have gotten word that the Western Test Range of the Air Force is seeing the Challenger… on its radar, from Vandenberg Air Force Base… from Mission Control…  
  
Ground track and the energy, that is the velocity, the descent rate, et cetera for the Challenger are all nominal…  
  
Sherr: All nominal. That means things look good.  
  
PAO: 509 nautical miles to touchdown.  
  
CapCom: Chase, Houston, stand by for Mach 12...  
  
Cernan: Mach 12, that’s twelve times the speed of sound, if you can imagine that. Ant they’re still at over almost 200 feet… 200,000 feet above the surface of the Earth…  
  
CapCom: Mark, Mach 12.  
  
Chase: Chase copying Mach 12.  
  
Sherr: Well, we will be seeing pictures of the Space Shuttle Challenger returning to Earth for the first time in five days in just a few moments. And our coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger will continue in a moment…  
  
PAO: Buckhorn has acquisition; 415 nautical miles up range from Edwards, altitude 168,516 feet.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston’s with you through Buckhorn, configure AOS.  
  
Weitz: Roger.  
  
CapCom: Okay. You’re looking real good. Your energy and ground track are right on, nav is good.  
  
Weitz: Okay. At time 23:57:40 we had an alert message on IMU brake 3, but it did not show up on the (garble).  
  
CapCom: Copy.  
  
Weitz: We also had a master alarm when I opened the (garble) TVC number two, probably just during the system (garble).  
  
CapCom: Copy.  
  
PAO: 300 nautical miles to the runway.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, IMU 3 looks good… probably just a transient.  
  
Weitz: Right.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, recheck configure AOS.  
  
Weitz: Okay, you got it now, Roy.  
  
CapCom: Roger.  
  
PAO: Velocity down to 7,790 feet per second, altitude 150,400 feet… range two-four-zero nautical…

    Sherr: This is a view of one of the chase planes out hunting around for the Challenger; the chase plane, acting as kind of an escort, will bring the ship in as it’s discovered. Challenger right now is about to cross over the California coast. It must be about two minutes away. There has been a signal acquired through the Buckhorn tracking station, that’s in California.  
  
Cernan: And Lynn, when she crosses over the coast, which will be as you say in less than two minutes…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, an update on the surface winds, holding fairly steady at two-one-zero degrees at 22 knots, 22 knot headwind, four knots on the left side; altimeter is the same I gave you before.  
  
Weitz: Okay, thank you, Roy.  
  
Sherr: That’s… that’s no danger, right, Gene? That headwind?  
  
Cernan: No, they’re just confirming the winds that they had told them earlier about this morning. Now, they’re crossing over Santa Barbara it this time; but they’re still over 3,000 miles an hour, and only 151 miles away.  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, take TACAN.  
  
Sherr: Now it get’s fast.  
  
CapCom: And P.J., we need for you to cycle the red controller, loop one only.  
  
Sherr: P.J., by the way, is the Commander…  
  
Weitz: (inaudible)  
  
CapCom: Yes, we saw that.  
  
Cernan: Now, TACAN means they’re getting active data here now from Edwards Air Force Base.  
  
PAO: Velocity 5,800 feet per second, range one-seventy nautical miles…  
  
Sherr: In less than half a minute they’ll cross over the California coast.  
  
Cernan: And they’re well over 100,000 feet high. So, you can see how quickly they slow down in the atmosphere. Remember, they’re still a glider; we tend to forget that sometimes because of the speed and the altitude at which it flies.   
  
PAO: Altitude 126,397 feet… velocity down to 5,000 feet per second, 140 nautical miles range…  
  
CapCom: Challenger, flash evap out message, disregard.  
  
Weitz: Well, we just got it, Roy.  
  
CapCom: Roger.

    PAO: The cameras at Santa Ynez, California, have picked up the spacecraft…  
  
Sherr: There is a small white spot in the middle of your monitor, and that should be Challenger. If you look very closely… This is a NASA tracking camera that has picked it up already.  
  
Cernan: You know it’s always exciting to get that first glimpse; outer space is still a little mysterious to most of us. That camera is located in northern California; it’s a long-range camera. We ought to be able to see the contrails of the chase planes pretty soon now. That’s our first real identification to be able then from there to see the Challenger itself… There it is!  
  
PAO: Range 30 nautical miles, 60,000 feet altitude, velocity 1,250 feet per second…  
  
Cernan: One of the reasons we can now see the Challenger on that camera… of course, one of the reasons for this long-range video is to document this part of the entry that we can see from the ground. It’s significantly important to the control and the further use of the Challenger.  
  
Sherr: Well, people have started…  
  
Cernan: There we have the chase plane!  
  
Sherr: There it is. There’s the contrails of the chase plane right overhead us; we can see it. It’s not quiet on your screen… There is Challenger!  
  
Cernan: We ought to get that sonic boom.  
  
PAO: Range 20 nautical miles.

Weitz: There’s the sonic buffet we’ve been waiting for.  
  
CapCom: Roger, copy that. You’re right on your energy.  
  
Weitz: Well, everything looks good here, Roy; couldn’t look better.  
  
CapCom: Looks the same down here, P.J.  
  
PAO: Velocity down to less than 1,000 feet per second, 40,000 feet altitude…  
  
  
“And then we got, while we were prepared for it, we did get the transonic buffet as we went through .95 mach,” Commander P.J. Weitz said post-flight. “And it was gone by the time we came below .92.”  
  
  
CapCom: Challenger, Houston, Bo, request manual open on landing gear isol valve number two.  
  
  
At that moment the now-familiar double sonic boom rolled over the Mojave Desert.  
  
  
Chase: Challenger, Chase is coming up low on the left.  
  
Sherr: Right on cue…  
  
Weitz: Hello, how are you today, Charlie?  
  
Chase: Doing pretty good; you guys are looking great.  
  
Weitz: Thank you, sir.  
  
Sherr: The sonic boom got a big cheer here.  
  
PAO: Spacecraft making the turn around the Heading Alignment Circle…  
  
CapCom: You’re intercepting the HAC; you’re right on.  
  
PAO: Photo chase pilot Charlie Justus is tagged up with the spacecraft, getting a good picture now from the rear seat camera… 25,000 feet altitude… now the manual pitch and roll mode…  
  
Cernan: … We’re getting a perfect shot of it from here, in the visual shot… The people here are ecstatic.

    Weitz: And we see balmy Lake Edwards in the Sun below right there.  
  
CapCom: There are probably a lot of sail boats out there today.  
  
Cernan: They were commenting on all the water that Paul Weitz can see that’s surrounding the runway…  
  
PAO: Nine miles from touchdown.  
  
Weitz: We got the HUD camera on.  
  
Sherr: Gene, you were mentioning it earlier; it’s like landing on a carrier.  
  
CapCom: That’s great. Final wind update, two-two-zero right down the runway at 18 knots.  
  
Weitz: Okay, I verify you still want the close aim point.  
  
CapCom: That’s affirm.  
  
PAO: 14,000 feet altitude…  
  
Cernan: What a pretty picture she is.  
  
Sherr: You know, this time they’ve painted Challenger’s name on the rear of the plane, so you can identify it from the air… not confuse it with Columbia.  
  
PAO: Still in manual mode on pitch and yaw, seven miles to touchdown…  
  
Cernan: And Paul Weitz is still flying it manually at this point in time. He’s got an option going in the automatic mode if he so desired, but he’s still holding on it manually.  
  
PAO: 10,000 feet…  
  
Cernan: 10,000 feet above the lakebed.  
  
Sherr: There, look at that wonderful shot, right from in front… coming right down at them…

Cernan: … About 300 miles an hour, yet… Here comes the landing gear, plenty of time…  
  
Sherr: Absolutely parallel with the ground.  
  
Cernan: He has headed it right into the wind… Keep it coming on down, Paul… It’s about ready for touchdown… Look for the dust… What a sight! Touchdown! And what a roar from the ground, Lynn…  
  
Sherr: Perfect landing; there it goes...  
  
Cernan: Challenger is back home. And what a sight!

PAO: We mark the unofficial touchdown time at five days, zero hours 23 minutes 42 seconds…  
  
Cernan: I think they were a few seconds off, but we’ll accept that at this point.  
  
Sherr: Because they took off eight hundredths of a second late, I believe, too; so it doesn’t really matter.  
  
Cernan: All that wait and fixing the engines has sure paid off, doesn’t it.  
  
Sherr: Now we have to wait to see how long it will be before they’ll come out of the spacecraft, now that they’ve actually have brought it home, got it down safely.  
  
Cernan: Unfortunately. I think, they’d like to get out quickly and kick the tire… and sort of exuberate…  
  
PAO: Wheels stop at 32 past the… minute…  
  
Cernan: The final test that was conducted here was a braking test; we couldn’t see it too well from here, but Paul Weitz was to apply maximum braking for a short period of time to see the response of the braking system, because, you know, next time we hope to see Challenger come back to the Kennedy Space Center.   
  
Sherr: On a much shorter runway, with alligators in the water…  
  
PAO: Convoy vehicles moving out to the spacecraft to begin deservicing procedures and safing… and another orbiter joins the fleet of active spacecraft in the STS system.  
  
Cernan: Challenger no longer a rookie.  
  
Sherr: Absolutely. And there is the proud announcement from NASA – another orbiter joins the fleet. This of course is what NASA has been waiting for, the chance to say that it really does have at least the beginnings of a fleet… two orbiters now, a third on its way out of the assembly line. About a year from now we should be seeing Discovery…  
  
Cernan: … And we do have a fleet of two operational shuttles.  
  
Sherr: … As you recall, it was just last July 4th when Columbia landed on that concrete strip. The President was out there with a great welcoming ceremony. And that’s when Challenger first flew back to the Cape to get processed for this mission. It took a lot longer than anybody expected, particularly with that two-and-a-half-months delay because of the engines. But, boy, Challenger certainly has proven it is part of the fleet… Gene Cernan, I thank you for bringing this one home safely, too.  
  
Cernan: Lynn, it was a privilege and certainly a lot of fun doing. So, thank you.  
  
Sherr: And thank you. It’s nice to have Challenger back, and we’re looking forward to the next event of the Space Shuttle program. That should happen sometime in June when STS-7 goes up… and that will be the first American woman, Sally Ride, to fly as an astronaut. For Jules Bergman in Houston, for Michael Coats, an astronaut who helped us out, for Gene Cernan and myself here at Edwards Air Force Base, thank you all very much. We’ll have more on the shuttle, including comments from the astronauts when they come out of the orbiter, later this evening on the ABC News Weekend Report.

So we landed on Runway 22 at Edwards,” STS-6 Pilot Karol Bobko told an Oral History Project interviewer in February 2002. “You know, it’s a big runway. There wasn’t anything that was really surprising about it. We just landed on the solid surface or on the concrete runway, rather than landing on the lakebed. If the lakebed is dry, it gives you a little more latitude. You know, it’s got very large runways, but, luckily, on this flight, nothing was wrong, so we didn’t have to take that extra margin in any way. Landing on the concrete was just fine.”  
  
  
PAO: This is Mission Control Houston. Some 9,100 feet is the nearest marker to the edge of the runway where orbiter Challenger stopped. So the actual rollout distance will be somewhat less than that, depending on how far beyond the threshold the main gear touched down… and that will be sometime in the coming out when someone walks the ground… Some more unofficial landing numbers… the main gear is estimated to have touched down on Edwards 22 at 1,800 feet beyond the threshold… nose gear down at 4,800 feet. And since the spacecraft came to rest at the 91-hundred-foot mark, that gives a difference for a rollout at 7,300 feet – subject to change… ground crews dressed in protective clothing surrounding the orbiter, attaching various support carts, deservicing equipment… The Auxiliary Power Units on Challenger have now been turned off… The Challenger crew currently powering down the General Purpose Computers in the spacecraft…

    During her 120 hour-long maiden voyage – spanning five days, 24 minutes 31 seconds – the Challenger had orbited the Earth a total of 80 times, travelling 1,819,859 nautical miles. The orbiter, weighing approximately 196,600 pounds at landing, had touched down about 1,800 feet beyond the Runway 22 threshold. Landing speed at main gear touchdown was marked at 195 knots. The crosswind was at an acceptable 18 knots. Challenger needed 49 seconds between touchdown and wheel stop. “Right down the middle of the runway; a good Air Force-type landing,” shuttle program chief and Lt. General USAF James Abrahamson commented on Captain USN, ret., Paul Weitz’ skills.  
  
“We had a braking protocol this time that said after you put the nose down at, I think it was 160 knots, then P.J. Weitz would go to maximum braking condition and carry that down to 80 knots,” said Abrahamson.” And then he would go and try to maintain about a six to eight feet per second deceleration rate after that. And, of course, this was a higher deceleration type of braking protocol than we had on the last flight; and that’s why we have a shorter ground run of about 7,400 feet.”  
  
“And from all indications, he did that particularly well,” General Abrahamson continued. “Now, he had an aid to help do that. Remember this time we had a Heads-Up Display; and what that is is a glass that allowed P.J. to look out the window, but have the information right in front of him and he was able to look out through it. And he was able to have a very easily followed display of his deceleration curve as he went ahead. And so I’m sure that made it easier for him to conduct that braking protocol.”  
  
Considering the way the Challenger handled, Commander Weitz told reporters he would have felt confident coming into Kennedy Space Center. “With hindsight I’d have 100 percent confidence of going into KSC. At the time I wouldn’t have, but now, as I say with hindsight, I feel confident in our ability to land OV-099 at the Cape. And whether it’s going to land there on the next mission or not is going to be a programmatic decision.”

    The safing of Challenger ran about five minutes ahead of schedule, and the orbiter was towed to the Mate/Demate Device only three and a half hours after wheel stop, 30 minutes sooner than expected. The lack of ejection seats on this vehicle enabled crews to work on system shutdown on the flight deck with much more ease.  
  
  
PAO: Challenger’s crew now exiting the spacecraft, coming down the stairs… where they perhaps walk around, kick the tires, before going over to the medical exam and the ceremony thereafter, being greeted by JSC Director of Flight Operations, George Abbey… Here in Mission Control the mission plaque is being hung on the sidewall to join others from previous programs and shuttle missions – going all the way back to Gemini 4 in 1965… This is Mission Control Houston, it’s reported from Dryden that there are absolutely zero leaks in any of the spacecraft’s systems, as reported by the ground service crew connecting up the various deservicing trucks… The Challenger crew currently boarding the van for transport back to the brief medical exam and the ceremonies prior to return to Houston, which is estimated at some 7:00 p.m. Central Time  at Ellington Field...


	25. STS-6:post-landing

**PAO** : Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the STS-6 post landing press conference from NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility. Before we begin I have a few announcements. First, the STS-6 orbiter status press conference is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time tomorrow, Sunday, April 10. Another, an estimated 100,000 visitors have gathered here today to view the landing of the Challenger and our STS-6 crew.  
  
Following today’s press conference, the flight crew will be welcomed in a ceremony at the Dryden Flight Research Facility. Attending the ceremony will be the STS-6 crew, who will make a few remarks, as will NASA Administrator James M. Beggs, California Governor George Dukemagien, and the Air Force Flight Test Center’s Major General Peter W. Augers.  
  
With us today for the STS-6 post landing press conference is Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, NASA Associate Administrator for Spaceflight, and Mr. Ed Smylie, Associate Administrator for Space Tracking and Data Systems…   
  
**Abrahamson** : Well, how was that for a mission? Well, let’s see… The crew was out at 11:24 (a.m. PST). They’re in great shape; they’ve been in great shape for months actually, and really did a superb job on the mission. The mission clearly was, with one exception – and the drama we’ll leave to Mr. Smylie to talk about, the drama department here – with the exception of the problem areas that we had during the deployment of the IUS and the separation of the TDRS satellite, the mission was just incredibly routine. And it really meant that the Challenger is just a superb spacecraft.  
  
Let me give you a feel for what this is like. First of all, we keep track of anomalies; it’s just like a maintenance record that some of you keep on your automobiles. Some maybe, like me, don’t do it too well. But, these anomalies we pile up during the missions and, of course, go to work on them well before the mission is complete.  
  
On STS-1, remember this is a long time ago now, but this was the first flight of the Columbia and it was only a two-day flight, and there were 82 anomalies of the system. Now, that’s not just the Columbia itself, but the whole system itself. Each flight got better; down to the last flight of the Columbia it was all the way down to 27.  
  
And I think I’ve said in the past that we really like used spacecraft. Well, of course, you know we had a rather long delayed period on our new spacecraft, and we didn’t really like the new engines, or the fact that we had to have a period in which we had… we shook this one out. But we ended up the flight as of just prior to reentry with only 22 anomalies, which meant that we’re just continuing down this learning curve in just really great shape. So I’m delighted.  
  
Now, you all know that, and you probably see on TV, that we have some areas where we have lost some blankets on the OMS pods. Those are advanced thermal protection system blankets. Actually we have three: One that was kind of ripped off in the front part of the pod and then two on each side that are kind of bent and damaged and flap just a little bit.  
  
We don’t think that there was any thermal problem at all. Underneath that we have our RTV, and if you could see on the RTV it looked good and red, so there was nothing really burnt at all associated with that. On the starboard side we had an equivalent sort of problem, and there are three small pieces that are missing. We are getting rather, I won’t say blasé, but we are… we know that that sort of thing happens and we’ll resolve that very easily. So, I guess that’s the key point.  
  
There’s one other indicator of how routine the mission was, and this is a good strong indicator. It’s one that is of great interest to all of the crews that work around the clock at Johnson. That is that we did not have to do any significant replanning of the mission itself. On all of our past missions we have had some adjustment that we would make here and there in the timeline, and change some of the things. And that meant that a ground crew was working overnight to change the sequence or to send up new checklists for the flight crew, and it meant changes.  
  
This time it was flown exactly as planned, including a marvelous EVA. So we’re just delighted with the entire mission. And of course we’re also very pleased that we’re at a situation now where it clearly looks like we can recover the TDRS spacecraft. And that really was a drama period, and it was people that allowed us to recover from some bad things that happened to us… also, some good things happened to us. And notice, I don’t say luck here. As to the bad things that happened, we have an investigation team – that’s already met – that is going after those things and will resolve those… the things on the IUS. The good things that happened are a result of the teams being ready, having been well trained and able to work together. And this a far-flung team that worked across the country. And Ed is going to talk to you about just what that was like. Ed, maybe you’d like to summarize that a little bit.  
  
 **Smylie** : Okay. If only my part of this could be as routine as your part, Abe. I’d like to say a few things before I get to that. In particular, as a customer to the STS system for this mission, I’d like to express my admiration and appreciation to Abe and the crew and all of the people in the manned spaceflight organization that took us to the point of deployment so flawlessly. It was really another step toward showing that the Challenger and the Columbia and the whole STS fleet is really, truly moving towards being an operational system.   
  
I think another step towards operations and something that I am particularly interested in – because I worked in it for ten years in Houston, in the Apollo program – is the EVA. EVA offers great promise and I’m glad to see the STS program back int business in EVA and that the group down at Houston, and Story and Don, were really doing such a great job. And that’s going to really be good for the program over both the near term and the long term.  
  
We had a problem after deployment from the Challenger on the second burn of the IUS. There was some kind of an anomaly. As General Abrahamson has said, there is an investigation team in place and working to resolve that. We’re confident that that will be done and we’ll get back on track there also. I guess I went from… from great expectations to the deepest despair, back to semi-elation, and now back to a point of hard, considered work as to what we do from here on out to get this spacecraft where we want it, and operating the way we know we can.  
  
But I would like to note that I was in the room in Houston when we were trying to… we weren’t _trying to_ , we were coordinating all the activities between ourselves, our contractors, SPACECOM and TRW, the Air Force, the Boeing people, and all of the other contractors and people around the country that were involved in the coordination of the activity to carry out the deployment sequence through the two burns of the IUS.  
  
And it worked very well. The decisions were made in real-time between the group of people all around the country. It wasn’t just in that room; it was everywhere and over a period of about three hours things happened in a way that we were able to get the spacecraft separated from the IUS, get the spacecraft under control and move on towards what we need to do to get it to operational. Once we got the spacecraft in an inertial mode and stabilized, the team in place to do that, our contractors, industry teams, SPACECOM and TRW, and the engineers from the Goddard Space Flight Center, have been working constantly since that time to be sure that we understand exactly the situation that we’re in and move towards a series of thruster burns over a period of about two weeks to impart about a thousand-foot-per-second additional velocity to the spacecraft at apogee over a period of about two weeks, at which time we believe we will be… are _confident_ that we  will be at the geosynchronous altitude that we require to operate the system the way that we want to, and at 74 degrees longitude.  
  
We will take our time in doing that. We haven’t decided at this point when we will initiate that activity. We don’t need to hurry. We’ve got the spacecraft in a very safe condition. The orbit is a good orbit; it will stay in that one as long as we need to make the decision to proceed with the burns. We’re using little or no fuel to hold the orbit that we’re in. Our altitude is good and we have plenty of time to analyze the situation and decide what to do next and when to do it. But we do know that we have enough fuel and we have the capability to get there, and we’ll be initiating that sometime whenever our teams have all analyzed it and have decided that we’re ready to go.

 **Question** : Abe, first question is how long you think the repair of the blanket insulation will take. What will it add in the turnaround time? And the second part, it may be glasses time again, but could you give us the schedule for the next mission.  
  
  **Abrahamson** : I understand that you want to make reservations at the Cape, right? Actually, the repair of the blankets… I was looking at the 103 vehicle last night down at Downey, or… I’m sorry, at Palmdale here, and we’re putting on those blankets. We can put on maybe ten or twelve a day, very easily. So it just won’t add any turnaround time at all. We’ll probably take our time about it though, because we’d like ti understand just exactly what it is that it came off. But it won’t add any time, and then it’s a matter of just a day or two. – Okay, next launch. We’re planning an early-June launch, as I mentioned, and we’re not picking an absolute date at this point in time because we would like to see just how quickly we can turn around the spacecraft here and get it back to Kennedy. And we’re just tentatively targeting about the second week in June at this point… Pardon me?  
  
 **Question** : How about eight?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : Eight. We’re tentatively about the first week in August.  
  
 **Question** : Abe, what about Spacelab? Will the TDRS problem affect that at all now?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : Well, we do have some relay tests decisions to make as we go through the summer, of course. The investigation effort, which is just an accelerated investigation effort by a joint team of NASA and the Air Force on the IUS, will determine whether or not we can quickly find out, number one, what the problem was – and develop a fix that we can have confidence in. Until we do that, we won’t commit another IUS with another TDRS; so that gate we have to get through prior to the time we launch the second TDRS spacecraft.  
  
Now, just in case something goes wrong with that and we can’t make that by the first week in August time frame, we are working on a backup plan; and that backup plan is to use a single TDRS to support the Spacelab mission. And that’s looking favorable, however, we have several things we have to go through with that as well. We have a great number of scientific customers on Spacelab, as well as the European Space Agency. So, once we get this plan fully laid out, and have determined whether or not we indeed need a sufficient number of the science objectives – so they will determine that from a science point of view, as well as a Spacelab checkout point of view, that that’s a satisfactory mission – well, then we’ll go ahead.  
  
Now, from the Space Shuttle viewpoint, we can maintain that September 30 launch; that’s not a problem. The real question is, will we be able to get the science return we’re after. And as I say, that’s more favorable now, as we’re going through that backup plan, even with a single TDRS. But that final decision won’t be made for about a month.  
  
 **Question** : What about a worst case scenario for Spacelab if this second TDRS is not sent up? And this alternate plan doesn’t meet your needs for your various customers? Would you hold the Spacelab for another flight, or what would happen with that?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : That’s a tough decision we’d have to make. And I couldn’t make that alone. I’d have to make it in collaboration with our European partners in the Spacelab program. Their preference at this point, provided we can get an acceptable level of science, is to hold to that September 30 date. If it’s for some reason slipped into the winter period, then the science would be impacted another way. We would not have the right time of the year, and some of the lunar conditions that we want in order, again, to get good science. So, it could be a significance that this happened. We’re doing our best to avoid that.  
  
 **Question** : Is the shuttle’s credibility of being able to put satellites into orbit threatened at all by the mishap? By the problems you’ve had with this?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : I don’t think so. We’ve continued to sign up customers by the way, throughout the time we were on the ground prior to the flight, and even another one during the flight. So, I don’t think so. Now, surely there is – and I don’t want to minimize the problem – there is an honest to goodness problem with the IUS that we have to find and solve. And we’ll do that, and we’ll find it and we’ll solve it.  
  
Remember, most of the payloads, particularly the commercial payloads, go up on PAM-D and PAM-D2, an advanced version of the PAM. At this point in time, the IUS is only going to put up in the near term some very large NASA payloads; those are Ed’s, the TDRS satellites, and for the Department of Defense, some of their large security payloads. So, outside of that rather limited community the IUS problem should not affect the shuttle’s overall system capabilities.  
  
 **Question** : Will the investigating board be able to definitely find the cause of this IUS failure, and if so, when?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : It’s very hard to predict, of course, what the board, when the board will be able to come up with data, because one of the things that we lost was the telemetry on the IUS. But we did get some rather critical items of telemetry that indicated some of the problems that we had prior to the time that the whole anomaly developed. We also got a very exciting picture of the failure itself.   
  
We have a very powerful camera that’s part of the NORAD net that was in New Mexico. And what we’ve seen… we saw the failure. You can see the plume develop on the IUS and develop for about 300 miles, this large plume stick out behind us; and then, at the time of the failure, you can see that the plume pushes off in another direction, and you can see just exactly the timing, and how it went hard over.   
  
So, that’ll be a great help to the investigating board. I think we have a significant amount of information; whether or not we had enough to be able to get right down and find exactly the cause is of course a real challenge. And therefore I can’t predict it.  
  
 **Question** : I gather your doomsday scenario here is not finding the cause of the STS-6 IUS failure and not being able to launch the IUS on STS-8. And you’re needing one TDRS minimum to do the Spacelab with. Is that not correct?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : That was the worst case, but as I’ve indicated we have high confidence we can restore this one, so we think that we do have an optional backup. And, of course, I have a team of people now doing backup scheduling in case the IUS and TDRS flight aimed at the first week in August had to be delayed. So, we’re looking at how it is we can – with minimal impact to our customers – have a way in which we can go up a little later.  
  
 **Question** : Are there any considerations on your part to really look seriously at placing an EVA on flight eight or ten to get more experience on the hardware before committing to Manned Maneuvering Unit ops on eleven?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : We have looked at that and find that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and therefore I just had to say that eleven is the right place to do that. One thing that might change that whole scenario would be if, for some reason, we were not able to proceed with the IUS/TDRS flight on eight. That will provide both an opportunity in additional payload weight and capability to do some additional things on the flight. So, those might change then.  
  
 **Question** : Well, that really gets into my second question, Abe. What is your option for flying eight with the Insat payload, and possibly an EVA on eight, if you can’t get the IUS issue resolved? Would you still look to fly the eight crew, with the Insat, in that August timeframe?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : We’re looking at several different alternatives, and we just haven’t made those decisions yet.  
  
 **Question** : On nine, if for some reason the TDRS system doesn’t work itself out, is there any contingency to reconfigure nine to do something else with that shuttle opening?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : No. At this point, all of our emphasis has been on just seeing if we can in fact maintain that schedule for the Spacelab itself. Now, if for some reason we were not able to launch Spacelab on the ninth, or on the September 30 date on that ninth mission, then that opens up a flexible area on which we could do some minor changes for all of the others. But I would remind you that it’s not just a matter of changing the shuttle timeline. The shuttle is getting to be more and more flexible. We also have to have the payloads ready; and there are limits into how much the various customers can either accelerate or accept a delay in their payloads. So, that’s clearly a factor, as well as the shuttle scheduling.

 **Question** : Can you tell us how the overall performance of the Challenger compares to that of the Columbia, and as a follow up, if there is a favorable comparison, can you say that the shuttle program has truly arrived that you feel confident, that you can build spacecraft, send them into space, bring them back without any particular problem?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : Well, I mentioned the number of anomalies. I think that is a very good indicator; and indeed the Challenger was a much better spacecraft. It was manufactured in a more exacting way and had a higher quality level. And that’s what one expects with the second vehicle as opposed to the first. So I clearly feel that all the indicators are that it is indeed a better spacecraft.   
  
However, I’d like to concentrate on the team. I was asked prior to the lift-off, are we operational? Essentially the same question you had. I believe we will still find, as we go downstream, some minor hardware problems and probably some software problems. There still is a level of maturity that the system has to achieve, and I don’t expect any of them will be serious problems, because I think that we’ve gotten most of the significant bugs out of the system. But there will be some.  
  
Most important thing, and the one that I like to focus on, and the one that I think is a real credit to the Space Shuttle organization, is that the team is ready to find these problems and in stride solve those problems, and make corrections and get the machines back into operation. Now, it cost us a little bit this time. It cost us two and a half months, but that was the price that was worth paying to assure the safety of the astronauts and the vehicle.  
  
Furthermore, it was a price worth paying because we’re going to have a better, more operational program downstream. And we did develop tests and procedures starting way back in the manufacturing process, a little tighter operation there, and the engineering process, and all the way through our flows down to between flight checks at the Cape. So, if you measure operational by the people, I think that at least I’m very confident that we can go ahead. And in the airplane programs and missile programs I’ve been associated with in the past, that’s the best way to measure whether or not you’re operational, because there’s always a problem you have to solve. In fact, if we didn’t have any problems to solve, this would be boring business.  
  
 **Question** : You had a spectacular glamorous flight. The EVA was just spectacular. What are you going to give us for an encore in terms of very specific things in terms of EVA? And what have you that the public can look forward to?  
  
 **PAO** : Did you plant that question, Abe?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : Well, the real objective of the program is not to have a series of circuses, you know that. But we like to do things that are exciting for all of us and that lead to the operational capability of the system. Let me try to put in context what I think is going to be an exciting year.  
  
On the next flight, the seventh, of course we’ll put up two communications satellites. But following in the context of the EVA and getting ready to demonstrate our ability to repair satellites, Sally Ride, our first lady astronaut, will operate our Canadian arm. What she’ll do is she’ll take a German payload… now notice that nice international flavor to that. She’ll take a German payload, an exciting one called SPAS, and I think I commented on that last time. And she’ll put it outboard with the Canadian arm, and it’ll fly and keep formation with the shuttle, and we’ll kind of move around and do that. But we’ll really test our ability to reach out with this Canadian arm, grapple the satellite, alright, with different rates and small errors associated with it and bring it back and put it in the bay. And we think that’s a very important thing to demonstrate.  
  
Next, in the eleventh flight downstream, we’ll demonstrate the Manned Maneuvering Unit. And at that point our astronauts will not have to be tied to the tethers, but they’ll go scooting around outside the bay in order to demonstrate maneuverability in the fact that we can in fact control the movement and work in the space around the shuttle itself.   
  
And, of course, all of this is a step by step process to work up to the thirteenth flight, which is scheduled late in the spring of ’84; and that’s when we’ll go out and we’ll repair a wounded satellite, the Solar Max satellite.  
  
And I think that’s a whole series of things that have got to catch the public imagination. It certainly catches ours. But the important thing is we’re approaching it in a step by step conservative fashion to ensure that we’ll have the capability to do it, and to do it well. And that’s the kind of sequence as we go through the next year. Now, in addition, of course, we’re putting up some very exciting payloads and having a series of important scientific experiments as well. And I don’t want to minimize those.  
  
 **Question** : And just one more question about STS-7. In view of the success of the EVA and your own expressed wish to press on with this activity, are you likely to introduce an EVA on that mission?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : No, because we have a very full mission associated with the other objectives. And some of those objectives, of course, as I indicated are part of this plan to develop this high confidence that we can indeed make a satellite repair on the 13th mission. So, it’s important to us to have some stability in our planning and we won’t, we will not introduce an additional EVA session on that particular one.  
  
 **Question** : What about future shuttle landings? Will they continue here at Edwards? Will they move to Florida, or elsewhere?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : Our next landing, God willing that we have some nice weather in Florida, we’re planning at the Cape. Now, there will be some limits, and we have to have something that we can accept; we don’t want a crosswind more than around ten to fifteen knots, and that final decision has yet to be made. And in the June timeframe we don’t think that’ll be a problem. However, we are concerned about the weather at that point. There are quite a few thunderstorms at the Cape, and we have to be able to predict a full three hours or so prior to the landing. So, we’ll look very carefully at what the local weather looks like primarily from a thunderstorm viewpoint; we don’t want to land through any thunderstorms. But the plan is to go to the Cape.  
  
 **Question** : Routinely, that is? Edwards will no longer be the primary landing site?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : No, we’ll alternate back and forth. The eighth flight, providing we do go ahead as scheduled, will be a night landing. And the first time we do this at night, we’d like to have all the room that’s around here; and provided the lake finally becomes a _dry_ lake again, like it ought to be, well, then we’ll come back here on the eighth flight. So, it will alternate back and forth depending on some of our objectives and some of our limits for a period of time. But our objective is to get routinely to the Cape as quickly as possible.  
  
 **Question** : Philosophically, now that you have demonstrated the spectacular success  of the Challenger, does this give you a level of confidence to plan things that before this mission you didn’t have the confidence to plan looking down beyond ‘84? And if so, what are some of those things that you can now realistically expect to accomplish that before this you couldn’t?  
  
 **Abrahamson** : I think there’s a better way to put that: We have had plans which step up and take on more difficult challenges as we go on through that. And what’s happening is that with each success that confirms that indeed our plans are good plans. So, what we had happen this particular time hasn’t said, “Okay, now we have a whole new horizon opened up.” I think, much better is that we had both some dreamers and planners in the agency, and those dreamers and planners are finding that we’re moving a little ways away from the dreams into the reality of the planned.

————

 **April 16** : CHALLENGER WHEELS IN FOR SPRING CLEANING

Challenger, described as the "cleanest" spacecraft to return from space, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center at 12:45 p.m. EST, riding atop a 747 jet. The mated pair of planes approached the Space Center from the south, flew over the runway once and circled back over the Indian River. On April 14 Challenger was flown to Kelly AFB, Texas, on the first leg of her return to Kennedy. After a one-day stopover the SCA/OV-099 combo left for Florida. At KSC, about 2,000 tourists and KSC workers and their families saw the landing from close-up. Challenger was then demated and towed to the Orbiter Processing Facility. NASA officials said preparations for the seventh Shuttle mission had already begun.

The vehicle looks like we just rolled out of the OPF at Kennedy,” KSC Ground Operations Manager Jim Harrington had said immediately after touchdown at Edwards AFB a week ago. “It’s just a clean ship. Compared to what we’ve seen in the past, it’s probably a lot cleaner than any of the Columbia flights.” NASA spokesman Mark Hess today said Challenger not only was cleaner in appearance, but also encountered fewer problems than was the case with Columbia.   
  
One of the few flight anomalies included a random propellant leakage of an RCS thruster during the mission, and this indicated drainage of the No. 2 manifold before the ferry flight back to KSC. It took some six hours to unload the six gallons (22.7 liters) of monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, but a 12-15 hour deservicing operation on the whole manifold area was accomplished to enable extensive leak checks on the system. It was thought that KSC ground-based quick-disconnect equipment had damaged the onboard unit, but evaluation found no traces of hardware damage to the connection. The investigations will continue back at the Cape.  
  
Tile damage to OV-099 is minimal but noticeable. Three Advanced Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation thermal protection blankets were blown loose, one lost completely, on the left side OMS pod, and three were also lost from the right-side OMS as well. Some of the damage on the OMS pods is thought to have been caused by encountering Max-Q during launch.  
  
The AFRSI thermal blanketing “consisted of silica tile material sandwiched between sewn composite quilted fabric which was much lighter than the Low-temperature Reusable Surface Insulation tiles used on other sections of the orbiter’s airframe,” Ben Evans describes in his book _Space Shuttle Challenger – Ten Journeys into the Unknown._ “Challenger’s AFRSI damage ranged from missing outermost sheets and insulation to broken stitches and, in the severest cases, was even attributed to ‘some type of undetermined flow phenomena’ during reentry.” In addition, about five square inches of LRSI on the Challenger’s body flap was eroded. As with the Columbia flights, there was some discoloration of the white-tile LRSI surface of Challenger, though not so marked as on Columbia.  
  
“Brake, axle and wheel damage suffered by Columbia at the end of STS-5 had already led to the incorporation of successful ‘saddle’ modifications,” wrote Ben Evans in 2007. “However, the Challenger’s landing was not as perfect as expected. During post-landing disassembly, six cracks were detected on three stators in her right-hand inboard brake. Subsequent investigation revealed an undersized machining template had caused expansion slots in the stator disks to be produced ‘undersized’; it was possible, NASA’s report said, that similar problems had arisen on STS-5, although on that mission the stators were so ruined that it was difficult to prove.”  
  
Planning calls for a launch of STS-7 on June 9, which would mean a record vehicle turnaround at KSC; the STS-8 launch is scheduled for early August. Last week, Associate Administrator for Spaceflight Lt. General James Abrahamson said AFRSI installation on orbiter 103, the Discovery, is now progressing at the rate of ten or twelve each day, and that he expects the repair of those on Challenger will add little, if any, time on the tight turnaround process at the Cape. Also, a possible quick-fix remedy is considered for STS-7, before a more permanent fix with new blankets for STS-8.

 


	26. STS-7:background

The seventh flight in the Space Shuttle program was the second flight for the orbiter Challenger. The crew consisted of two pilot astronauts and three Mission Specialists, making it the largest single-mission crew in the history of the American space program. More importantly, at least in public perception, STS-7 was NASA’s first flight by a mixed male and female crew.  
  
The official emblem for the mission is a round, four-inch diameter patch. It has an outer band of red color. At the top of the band the name _Challenger_ is written in white letters; at the bottom, the crewmembers’ surnames – _Crippen, Fabian, Hauck, Ride, Thagard_ – are also listed in white. A thin white line borders the outer red band and frames the inner space scene.  
  
The inner scene has a background of dark navy blue which represents the background of outer space. Dispersed throughout this background are seven bright white stars which symbolize the mission designation. At the right, a bright yellow Sun shines on the Earth, aesthetic cloud swirls and atmospheric layers of different shades of blue and white to the left, and the underside of the orbiter depicted in the center of the emblem.  
  
Joined in the center of the Sun are four white arrows and a cross – elements of the common Mars and Venus symbols for male and female. Of course, they represent the five crew members.  
  
A head-on view of Challenger dominates the center of the scene as it orbits the blue-white globe below. The lower side of the orbiter is highlighted with gold, as if reflecting the Sun. The orbiter is primarily white; silver and grey are used for aesthetic shading and black is added for detail. The payload bay doors are open, and the Remote Manipulator System arm, bending at all joints, is extended in the shape of an Arabic 7 – an additional symbol of the mission designation. A similar maneuver actually was performed by the Challenger crew using the real RMS during STS-7.

———-

A strange paradox occurred in the summer of 1976. For nearly a year, no Americans had ventured into orbit; nor would they do so for at least four years. The space ambitions of the United States were by no means directionless, but its 30-strong astronaut corps faced a crisis: no missions were available in the foreseeable future, yet more astronauts were urgently required. By the time the shuttle entered operational service sometime in 1980, NASA optimistically hoped that missions would be launching as often as once every fortnight.  
  
In other words, more crews would rocket into the heavens during its first couple of years than had previously ridden every American spacecraft since May 1961. A corps of less than three dozen could not support such an ambitious flight rate, obliging NASA, in a July 8, 1976 press release, to announce plans to recruit Space Shuttle astronauts:  
  
  
 _“NASA issued a call today for Space Shuttle astronaut candidates. Applications will be accepted until June 30, 1977, and all applicants will be informed of selection by December 1977. At least 15 pilot candidates and 15 mission specialist candidates will be selected to report to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, on July 1, 1978, for two years of training and evaluation. Final selection as an astronaut will depend on satisfactory completion of the evaluation period_  
  
NASA is committed to an affirmative action program with a goal of having qualified minorities and women among the newly selected astronaut candidates. Therefore, minority and women candidates are encouraged to apply.  
  
Pilot applicants must have a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution in engineering, physical science or mathematics or have completed all requirements for a degree by Dec. 31, 1977. An advanced degree or equivalent experience is desired. They must have at least 1,000 hours first pilot time, with 2,000 or more desirable. High performance jet aircraft and flight test experience is highly desirable. They must pass a NASA Class 1 space flight physical. Height between 64 and 76 inches is desired.  
  
Applicants for Mission Specialist candidate positions are not required to be pilots. Educational qualifications are the same as for pilot applicants except that biological science degrees are included. Mission Specialist applicants must be able to pass a NASA Class 2 space flight physical. Height between 60 and 76 inches is desired.  
  
Pay for civilian candidates will be based on the Federal Government's General Schedule pay scale from grades GS-7 through GS-15, with approximate salaries from $11,000 to $34,000 per year. Candidates will be compensated based on individual academic achievements and experience. Other benefits include vacation and sick leave and participation in the Federal Government retirement, group health and life insurance plans.  
  
Civilian applicants may obtain a packet of application material from JSC. Requests should be mailed to either Astronaut (Mission Specialist) Candidate Program, or Astronaut (Pilot) Candidate Program, Code AHX, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas 77058.  
  
Military personnel should apply through their respective military departments using procedures which will be disseminated later this year by DOD. Military candidates will be assigned to JSC but will remain in active military status for pay, benefits, leave and other military matters.  
  
Currently, 31 persons are available as Space Shuttle crewmen, including nine scientists. Twenty-eight of them are astronauts assigned to the Johnson Space Center and three hold government positions in Washington, D.C.  
  
The Space Shuttle is a reusable vehicle that will replace virtually all of this nation's space launch vehicles. Shuttle missions could include deploying and retrieving satellites, servicing satellites in orbit, operating laboratories for astronomy, Earth sciences, space processing and manufacturing, and developing and servicing a permanent space station. Launched like a rocket, the shuttle will perform Earth orbital missions of up to 30 days, then land like an airplane and be refurbished for another mission.   
  
Pilot astronauts will control the shuttle during launch, orbital maneuvers and landings and be responsible for maintaining vehicle systems. Mission Specialist astronauts will be responsible for the coordination of overall orbiter operations in the areas of flight planning, consumables usage and other activities affecting payload operations. At the discretion of the payload sponsor, the Mission Specialist may assist in the management of payload operations, and may, in specific cases, serve as the Payload  
Specialist. They will be able to continue in their chosen fields of research and to propose, develop and conduct experiments.  
  
Crews could consist of as many as seven people – Commander, Pilot, Mission Specialist and up to four Payload Specialists, who need not be NASA employees and who will be nominated by the sponsors of the payload being flown. Payload Specialists will operate specific payload equipment where their special skills are needed. Potential users of the Space Shuttle include government agencies and private industries from the United States and abroad.” 

_————_

_On February 1, 1978, the first Space Shuttle-era astronauts, thirty-five in number, stood on the stage in the auditorium of Building 2 at Johnson Space Center to be formally introduced to the world. I was one of them,” Mike Mullane wrote later. “The actual press announcement had come two weeks earlier. Not that I expected to be picked. Far from it.”_  
  
“On Monday morning, January 16, 1978, while dressing for work, I turned on the TV. I wasn’t on it. But Sally Ride and five other women were. NASA had announced the newest group of astronauts, including the first women astronauts. There was video and newshounds jostling for positions in front of their homes. Vans with brightly colored TV call letters crowded the streets. Curious neighbors circled the houses. And these smiling, radiant, joyful young women answered questions shouted by the press, ’What’s it like to know you are one of the first women astronauts? When did you want to be an astronaut? Did you cry when you heard the news? Will you be scared when you ride the shuttle?’ ”  
  
“I went to my living room and drew back the curtain to see if there was a squadron of news vans parked in my driveway. Nope. No vans. No frothing press. No neighbors. Nothing. I was alone to dwell on my rejection. The winners were on TV. The losers were watching them. I drove to my Mt. Home AFB, Idaho, office to find my wife Donna had tried to reach me there. She had left a message, ‘Mr. Abbey at NASA called this morning and wants you to call him back.’ ”  
  
“I dialed the number and got Abbey’s secretary. After a moment of holding (more proof of rejection) he came on the line. ‘Mike, are you still interested in coming to JSC as an astronaut?’ There wasn’t enough spit in my mouth to wet a stamp, but somehow I managed to croak a reply, ‘Yes, sir. I would definitely be interested in coming to JSC.’ “  
  
“Interested?! What the hell was I saying?! I was interested in having Hugh Hefner’s job. I would kill to be an astronaut. Abbey continued, ‘Well, we’d like you to report here in July as a new astronaut candidate.’ I don’t recall anything else from that conversation. I was blind, deaf, and dumb with joy. NASA had selected Mike Mullane as an astronaut.”  
  
Or rather, as an astronaut candidate. “Our group,” he explained, “became the first to have the suffix candidate added to our astronaut titles. Until the TFNG handle stuck, we would be known as Ascans. A later class would call themselves Ashos for astronaut hopefuls. NASA had learned the hard way that the title astronaut by itself had some significant cachet. In one of the Apollo-era astronaut groups, a disillusioned scientist had quit the program before ever flying into space and had written a book critical of the agency. Since his official title had been astronaut, his publisher had been able to legitimately promote the book with the impressive astronaut byline.”  
  
“Now NASA was hedging its bets with our group. For two years we would be candidates on probation with the agency. If one decided to quit and go public with some grievance, NASA would be able to dismiss us as nothing more than a candidate, not a real astronaut. Personally, I felt the titling was an exercise in semantics. In my mind you weren’t an astronaut until you rode a rocket, regardless of what a NASA press release might say.”  


 _By the middle of July 1978, the 35 candidates had effectively more than doubled NASA’s existing astronaut corps. However, unlike previous selections, the new arrivals were positively welcomed by the _old hands__ from the Gemini and Apollo era. “They seemed to accept us pretty well,” said Ride. “We had them outnumbered, so I’m not sure they had a choice! It was clearly very different for them. They were used to a particular environment and culture. There were few scientists among them, but most were test pilots. Of course, the entire astronaut corps had been male, so they were not used to working with women. There had been no addition to the astronaut corps in nearly ten years, so even having a large infusion of new blood changed their working environment.”  
  
“However, they knew this was coming and they’d known it for a couple of years. By the time we actually arrived, they’d adapted to the idea. We really didn’t have any issues with them at all. It was easy to tell, though, that the males in our group were really pretty comfortable with us, while the astronauts who’d been around for a while were not all as comfortable and didn’t quite know how to react. But they were just fine and didn’t give us a hard time at all.”  
  
The selection committee, co-chaired by chief astronaut John Young, was looking specifically not only for academic and technical talent, but also for the ability of men and women to work effectively together. “And they succeeded,” added Ride. “It was a congenial class and we really didn’t have any issues at all within our group. They were very respectful and incorporated us as part of the group from the beginning. We all walked in as rookies; as neophytes in the astronaut corps.”  
  
“None of us knew anything about what was going to happen to us and so, as you can imagine, we were a pretty close-knit group. None of the astronauts who applied did it for publicity. Everybody applied because this is what they wanted to do, so the males in the group didn’t really want to be spending their time with reporters – they wanted to be spending their time training and learning things. Frankly, the women would have preferred less attention.”

 _Despite the hard work, the newcomers bonded exceptionally well; so well, in fact, that two astronaut marriages resulted from Group Eight. One was between Ride and Steve Hawley, another between Hoot Gibson and Rhea Seddon. Years later, Gibson, who flew Challenger in February 1984, the group was so large that it had to be split into two halves, both of which frequently entered into friendly competition through ‘red’ and ‘blue’ football matches. They organized happy hours on Friday nights, Christmas parties and New Year celebrations; turning, said Gibson, into an extended family as much as a spacefaring flight squadron._  
  
To highlight the distinction between themselves and the grizzled veteran astronauts already in Houston since the 1960s, they gave themselves the nickname “Thirty-Five New Guys,” designing TNFG patches and T-shirts to foster closer camaraderie. Mike Mullane, of course, has remarked that military pilots also knew of an obscene double entendre with the same acronym.  
  
“A sign of our closeness, we now had our class name,” he said. “There was no official requirement that a new class of astronauts name themselves. It just happened. For us, TNFG stuck. In polite company it translated to Thirty-Five New Guys. Not very creative, it would seem. However, it was actually a twist on an obscene military term. In every military unit a new person was a FNG, a F***ing New Guy. You remained a FNG until someone newer showed up, and then they became the FNG. While the public knew us as the Thirty-Five New Guys, we knew ourselves as The F***ing New Guys.”


	27. STS-7:crew

**CDR Robert Laurel “Crip” Crippen** , Captain USN, refers to the “basic skills” of flight, and it is hard to exaggerate the importance of those two words. Like all astronauts, his skills go back a long way and have little to do with how Hollywood might judge him. Born in Beaumont, Texas, on September 11, 1937, and growing up in Porter, Texas, Robert Crippen graduated from the University of Texas in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering, and went to earn a commission with the Navy and to serve for two years as a pilot aboard the USS Independence. After that, he was first a student and then a teacher at the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. In 1966 he joined the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program as an astronaut, later joining NASA in September 1969 when that program was cancelled.  
  
Bob Crippen, together with astronauts Karol Bobko and William Thornton, was a crewmember on the highly successful Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test (SMEAT) – a 56-day simulation of a Skylab mission, enabling crewmen to collect medical experiments, baseline data and evaluate equipment, operations  and procedures. He then was a member of the astronaut support crews for the Skylab 2, 3 and 4 missions, and he served in this same capacity for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission which was completed successfully in July 1975.  
  
Crippen completed his first spaceflight as pilot of STS-1, the first orbital test flight of the orbiter Columbia in April 1981. Following his current assignment as Commander for STS-7 – when he will become the first person giving an encore performance aboard the Space Shuttle – he will command another Challenger mission, STS-12, in 1984. That five-day flight will deploy the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) and capture and repair the orbiting Solar Maximum Mission satellite.

In an interview for the October 1, 1982, issue of Space News Roundup, talking about astronaut turnaround for shuttle flights, Bob Crippen was asked how he would describe it.  
  
 **Roundup** : Does it consist of two weeks of jubilation, one week of debriefing, one day of rest and several months of training for the next flight?  
  
 **Crippen** : Well, we’re still finding out what that is. As the flight rate continues to increase, hopefully the turnaround time will end up being shorter. It’s going to be something like two years in my case. It’s not obvious to us right off the top just how much time should be given to that interim period.  
  
 **Roundup** : Are there any biomedical considerations in determining how long that interim between flights should be?  
  
 **Crippen** : No. It’s who can do it when, who’s available, how much additional training if any is required. If I come back to fly another deploy mission, and we’ll be doing quite a few of them, I would imagine from my standpoint there would be very little difference. If I wasn’t out of the training flow that long, it wouldn’t take very long to get ready to go again.  
  
 **Roundup** : Is it part of NASA’s philosophy that time between flights should be as relatively short as possible, and secondly, would you think certain astronauts will come to specialize in certain types of flight?  
  
 **Crippen** : Both of those are possibilities. We haven’t figured it all out. From my own standpoint, I think somewhere around six months would be a nice turnaround time, and you might be able to get it less than that. Training for one of these flights is a pretty involved and demanding type of process. I’m not sure you would want to put somebody in that kind of demanding environment and work them at that pace for a long time. You should certainly have a little vacation time, and certainly take advantage of some of the things you’ve learned and maybe feed them back into the training process.   
  
So I don’t know exactly what the best time period is, but certainly two years is too long, I’ll tell you that. One thing that is important I feel is that crews need some time working together as a unit. So part of the process of bringing back a crew would be to have more time if your plan is to change who sits in the opposite seat. And there are lots of demands on lots of individuals and we’ll have to get educated on just how to work those out.  
  
I think it is quite possible that there will be general groups which tend to do deploy missions, others who do Spacelab and that kind of thing. Although at this particular stage, we don’t think it is the right thing to do to go and start developing those groups. It’s too early in the program.  
  
 **Roundup** : Is it just now starting to sink in, do you think, that the orbital flight testing is over, and all of a sudden here we are on the threshold of a really prodigious flight rate over the next few years?  
  
 **Crippen** : I think it’s going to be coming up on a lot of people pretty soon. The bow wave is about to hit us. Dick Truly and I were doing some planning for the astronaut office on how, from an organizational standpoint, we’re going to support this flight rate. And it becomes very apparent that we can’t do many of the things the office has done in the past in supporting other facilities. Sometime toward the end of next year, we’re going to have something like 40 people actively training for flights. And considering you always have to carry some overhead for other things, that’s really going to tie a lot of people up.  
  
 **Roundup** : Not to put you in the position of having to say, “Yes, I’d like to fly 47 more times in my career,” but do you think there is a magic number of flights that an average pilot can expect to make over the course of a career? Is 20 too much?  
  
 **Crippen** : I have no idea. Different individuals will be able to handle different amounts of flying. Twenty is an awful lot of flights. If you could turn around every six months, that would be about ten years of flying, roughly. That could be a lot. We might be able to reduce that to every three months. That will probably be the key element, that is, how long does it take to turn around? But I’ll tell you, that was so much fun on the first one, I’ll stick around for as long as I can.

———

 **PLT Frederick Hamilton Hauck** , Captain USN, was born April 11, 1941, in Long Beach, California, and grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., where his father, the late Captain Philip F. Hauck, was a Navy officer. In 1958 Hauck graduated from St. Albans School in Washington D.C.   
  
A Navy ROTC student at Tufts University, Hauck was commissioned upon graduation (with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics) in 1962. He reported to the USS Warrington, where he cut his naval teeth, serving 20 months as communications officer and CIC. In 1964, Hauck attended the U.S. Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, for studies in math and physics. For a brief time in 1965, he studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute, situated on the same campus. Selected for the Navy’s Advanced Science Program, Hauck went on to receive a Master of Science degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966.  
  
Hauck commenced flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, that same year, and upon receiving his wings in 1968 he reported to NAS Oceana, Virginia, for replacement pilot training in the Grumman A-6 Intruder attack airplane. He then reported for duty to squadron VA-35, where he served successively as line division officer and safety officer.  
  
During this tour he saw action in the Vietnam War with Air Wing 15, serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea in the Western Pacific. He flew a total of 114 combat and combat-support missions. In August 1970, Hauck returned to the east coast of the U.S. and VA-42, the Grumman A-6 Invader replacement squadron, as a weapons delivery instructor. He wanted to be a test pilot and was selected for training, reporting to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1971.  
  
A three-year tour of duty in the Naval Air Test Center’s Carrier Suitability Branch saw Hauck serving as a project test pilot for automatic carrier-landing systems in the Grumman A-6 Intruder, the McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom, and the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.  
  
In 1974, Hauck reported as operations officer to Commander Carrier Wing 14 aboard the appropriately-titled USS Enterprise. During this tour he flew the A-6 Intruder, A-7 Corsair 2 and the F-14 Tomcat during both day and night carrier-borne operations. Following a brief tour in squadron VA-128, Hauck joined Attack Squadron 145 as executive officer in February 1977, but the big break in his flying career came when he was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in January 1978, as part of the agency’s 35-strong Group 8 intake.  
  
Hauck didn’t grow up with an interest in space, and as a child there had been no space program for him to aspire to. “The word _Apollo_ didn’t even exist in terms of spaceflight when I was thinking about becoming a naval aviator, “ said Hauck, who was a junior in college when Alan Shepard made his first spaceflightin 1961. “Even before I became an aviator, while I was at the U.s. Naval Test Pilot School in Monterey, I had read that NASA was recruiting scientists to become astronauts, and I wrote a letter to NASA saying, _‘I’m in graduate school. You could tailor my education however you saw fit to optimize my benefit to the program, and I’d be very interested in becoming an astronaut.’_ I got a letter back saying, _‘Thank you very much for your interest. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’_ That was in early ‘65. I think, so it was twelve years later that tI was accepted into the astronaut program.”  
  
“I’d been interested in the space program the entire time that I was in the U.S. Navy, but I quite honestly thought that even if NASA did select more astronauts, I’d be a little long in the tooth to be able to join,” Rick Hauck told Nigel Macknight in an interview for his book _Shuttle._ “I was 33 years old when I finished my tour as a test pilot at Patuxent River in ’74. But then, in 1977, NASA did announce that they were going to select a group of astronauts to augment the corps to fly the shuttle. And I saw that announcement while I was based onboard USS Enterprise. As a matter of fact, myself and three other members of that crew wound up being selected into the program; myself, John Creighton, Hoot Gibson and Dale Gardner were all onboard Enterprise at that time.”

———

 **MS1/EV2 John McCreary Fabian** , Lt-Col. USAF, was born January 28, 1939, in Goosecreek, Texas, but considers Pullman, Washington, to be his hometown where he graduated from high school in 1957. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State University in 1962; a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1964; and a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the University of Washington in 1974.  
  
Fabian was an Air Force ROTC student at Washington State University and was commissioned in 1962. He had various assignments in the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and was assigned as aeronautical engineer at San Antonio Air Material Area, Kelly AFB, Texas. Here he was working in flight tests on F-106 aircraft and doing a number of other engineering tasks. Fabian then attended flight training at Williams AFB, Arizona, and spent five years as a KC-135 pilot at Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan.   
  
“I went to Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, and after graduation from pilot training I elected to join my brother’s squadron. I had a brother who was also a pilot, and so I became a member of his squadron,” John Fabian told Jennifer Ross-Nazzal during an interview in February 2006. “We were flying KC-135s in Michigan, and that included a number of trips overseas, two trips to Southeast Asia, to the Southeast Asian conflict, for three months each, and a couple of TDYs (Tour of Duties) to Europe. And I went to Alaska, which it was great flying experience and a lot of worldwide flying, which is very enjoyable.”   
  
John Fabian flew 90 combat missions in Southeast Asia. He has logged 3,400 hours of flying time (1983), including 2,900 hours in jet aircraft. Following additional graduate work at the University of Washington, he served four years on the faculty of the Aeronautics Department at The USAF Academy in Colorado. “While there, I learned that there was something called the Space Shuttle Program,” Fabian explained, “and they were recruiting astronauts and they could be six-foot-four, and so for the first time in the astronaut selection process, I was physically qualified, because I’d always been too tall. So with a relatively fresh Ph.D. and operational flying experience and the six-foot-one height, I applied for the program along with many thousands of others and got lucky and joined NASA in 1978.”

——-

 **MS2 Sally Kristen Ride** , PhD, was born in Los Angeles, California, May 26, 1951., “Ride's origins are as all-American as her achievements," _Time_ magazine explains. “She grew up in Encino, a Los Angeles suburb, reading a lot of science fiction as well as Nancy Drew and James Bond. Her father Dale taught political science at Santa Monica College; her mother Joyce stayed home with Sally and her younger sister Karen. Neither parent pushed her in any particular direction, except to make sure they studied and brought home the right kind of grades."   
  
In 1965 she entered Westlake High School, Los Angeles – a private all-girls school with the reputation of being one of the premier prep schools of the country. From its origin in 1904, Westlake’s motto has been “They can because they think they can” – a quote taken from Virgil’s _Aeneid_. By junior high school Sally Ride had become good enough in tennis to achieve national ranking. Her tennis abilities gained her a full scholarship at Westlake. “What she thought she was going to become was either a quarterback for the UCLA Bruins or a shortstop for the Dodgers,” her mother remembered later. “When she got to be 10 or 11, we gave her a tennis racket. And she was good at all sports. She played with the boys – better than most of them.”  
  
In 1968 she graduated from Westlake, where, according to Time magazine, “largely through the inspiration of a physiology teacher from UCLA, she had caught the science bug.” – “In high school, I think, I was always interested in science; I was fascinated by the space program,” Ride told an interviewer. “But back then, I don’t know, other people may have a different reaction, but I didn’t really think it was a viable career to think about being an astronaut. I honestly didn’t give it any thought as something that I could possibly do.”   
  
According to _Time_ magazine, Sally Ride pursued that science interest in college, first at Swarthmore, then at Stanford, to which she switched in her sophomore year. After two solid years of science and math, she turned to the humanities ("I needed a break from the equations") and fell in love with Shakespeare. In spite of encouragement from Billie Jean King, Ride decided to quit tennis and go on to full-time graduate studies in astrophysics at Stanford. She received a Bachelor of Science in physics and Bachelor of Arts in English in 1973, and Master of Science and doctorate degrees in physics in 1975 and 1978 respectively. She was a teaching assistant and researcher in laser physics when she became a member of NASA’s 1978 group of astronaut candidates.  
  
In October 2002 Sally Ride told interviewer Rebecca Wright, “I saw an ad in the Stanford University student newspaper that the Center for Research on Women at Stanford had put in the paper on behalf of NASA. It announced that NASA was accepting applications for what would be the astronaut class of 1978. The ad made it clear that NASA was looking for scientists and engineers, and it also made it clear that they were going to accept women into the astronaut corps. They wanted applications from women, which is presumably the reason the Center for Research on Women was contacted and the reason that they offered to place the ad in the Stanford student newspaper.”  
  
“I read the ad in the Stanford student newspaper, and either that very day or shortly thereafter whipped off a little handwritten note asking for more information. I remember that relatively quickly – and I don’t know whether that was a week or a month – I got a simple one- or two-page application that was not much more than, _Is there really somebody at the other end of this application? Do you really want to apply?_ It didn’t really ask for much more than the civilian equivalent of name, rank, and serial number: name, address, educational background, maybe names of a couple references. Not very much.”  
  
“I sent that in then got another form back that was considerably longer, much more like an application that asked for things like medical history, and asked why I wanted to be an astronaut. After that application form was received, NASA performed a background check on a certain fraction of the applicants. I don’t know whether they weeded anyone out before they did the background checks, but they probably did. They also conducted very detailed interviews with the references that applicants had listed. NASA reduced the number of applicants down to two hundred and invited those two hundred down to Houston, Texas, in groups of twenty. So I went to JSC with nineteen other prospective astronaut candidates for a week of interviews, briefings, and medical exams at JSC.”

———-

 **MS3/EV1 Norman Earl Thagard** , MD, was born in Marianna, Florida, on July 3, 1943, but considers Jacksonville, Florida, his hometown. There he graduated from Paxon Senior High School in 1961. He received Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in engineering science in 1965 and 1966 from Florida State University. Thagard subsequently performed premed coursework and received his MD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 1977.  
  
Beginning in September 1966, Thagard was on duty with the United States Marine Corps Reserve. In 1967 he achieved the rank of Captain and was designated a naval aviator in 1968, being assigned to duty flying F-4s at the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina. During a 12-month tour of duty in Vietnam, beginning in January 1969, he flew 163 combat missions and racked up a total of 11 strike flight air medals. Thagard was also awarded the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V, the Marine Corps “E” Award, the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm. He has logged 1,100 hours flying time (1983), 1,000 in jet aircraft.  
  
Returning to the United States in 1970, Norman Thagard was assigned aviation weapons division officer at the Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort, South Carolina. He resumed his academic studies in 1971, pursuing a degree in medicine while also continuing to study electrical engineering. His interning was in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. According to Michael Cassutt’s _Who’s Who in Space_ in 1977 Thagard “learned NASA’s search for new astronauts through his wife, Kirby, who saw the announcement.”   
  
When he received George Abbey’s phone call, confirming that he had been selected as one of the Thirty-Five New Guys, Thagard’s first reaction wasn’t pure joy, as he confessed during a 1998 interview: “Then I went back in my room and put my head down on the desk and was real depressed for the rest of the day,” he laughed. “That's honest. I was depressed. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but I finally think I understood that I'd always had goals, I always wanted to do this, that, and the other, but I never had really any goals beyond being an astronaut. So you're all of a sudden thinking there's nothing left to live for. Then you realize, well, yes, there is, because you still hadn't flown in space. So life goes on. But my reaction really surprised me at first, because it was depression.”

———-

Eight months into their training, the STS-7 quartet became a quintet,” Ben Evans tells in his book _Space Shuttle Challenger – Ten Journeys into the Unknown_. “When Vance Brand’s STS-5 crew rocketed into orbit in November 1982, one of their objectives had been to perform the first-ever shuttle spacewalk. That was cancelled due to unrelated equipment failures in the two spacesuits. However, the day before these problems materialized, another area of concern – space sickness – reared its ugly head.  
  
“The EVA had to be delayed because the guys weren’t feeling very well. And I remember in the case of Bill Lenoir, it was blamed on the fact that he’d brought jalapeño peppers up into orbit and eaten jalapeño peppers,” Rick Hauck remembered in a 2003 interview. “But in any case, I think with about six to eight months to go before we were to fly we were a crew of four and then they said, _‘We’ve got to learn more about space sickness,’_ and so Norm Thagard was added to the crew. He was a physician. And parenthetically, he and I had first met when we were both… I was a student naval aviator, he was a student Marine Corps aviator, and we were both on the USS Lake Champlain, learning to land airplanes on aircraft carriers. – But anyhow, in order to try to learn more about space sickness, they generated a bunch of tests, and I was one of the guinea pigs for the tests.”  
  
“At the time of Thagard’s assignment to the crew,” says Ben Evans, “just four days before Christmas 1982 – the STS-7 launch was still scheduled for April of the following year, which also provided NASA with invaluable data for how long astronauts needed to full prepare themselves for missions. Eventually, due to hydrogen leaks that pushed Challenger’s maiden voyage from late January until early April, Bob Crippen’s team found themselves rescheduled for mid-June. Despite his late addition, Sally Ride recalled that – aside from TNFG family ties they shared – Thagard blended in exceptionally well.”  
  
Norman Thagard, too, felt comfortable joining STS-7. “I was already assigned to support the crew,” he told Ben Evans in a March 2006 email correspondence, “and I had been working with them for months before being added to the crew, so I was familiar with the mission before my assignment. I performed a lot of the photography, was EV1 for contingency spacewalks and operated the RMS to capture the SPAS. Except to add my space sickness activities to the mission, there was little change to the pre-existing flight data file. As I was the physician most familiar with STS-7 and my previous technical assignments included rendezvous and proximity operations similar to those involved in releasing and recapturing the SPAS satellite, as well as operations of the Canadian-built robot arm, I was the obvious choice to fly.”


	28. STS-7:mission

_Three very important words were added to the JSC motto which first came into vogue during STS-5. The new motto: We Pick Up and Deliver.”_  
  
\- JSC Space News Roundup, July 1, 1983  
  
  
 _“When people ask me ‘Geez, you’ve got a 12-hour day – that sounds like a lot of work,’… It’s not work. It’s fun. So you may be putting in a lot of effort, but it’s not work. It’s fun.”_  
  
\- Rick Hauck, pilot Challenger STS-7   
  
  
STS-7 – AN AMBITIOUS MISSION  
  
The seventh flight of the Space Shuttle will be the most ambitious to date. On its second mission into Earth orbit the orbiter Challenger will chalk up a number of historical marks – firsts in space achievement. The use of a remote manipulator arm to deploy and release a free-flying space platform is a first. Then, the rendezvous, capture, retrieval and rebirthing of that platform, each is a first.  
  
And, the person operating these first-time achievements, is a first herself. “She,” is astronaut Mission Specialist Sally Ride who will operate the Canadian-built Remote Manipulator System arm, the deployment and retrieval element “exercising” the German-built Shuttle Pallet Satellite SPAS-01, a platform carrying materials processing experiments.  
  
Another first – a cosmetic one – is the fact that the platform has a black/white/color television camera, a 16mm camera and a 70mm camera aboard which remotely will film the Rockwell International-built Challenger for the first time in orbit as the spacecraft flies around the platform some 1,000 feet away. During this same period, cameras aboard Challenger will also be filming the SPAS-01.  
  
The platform is one of four major payloads located in Challenger’s 60-foot-long cargo bay. Two of the payloads are communications satellites, each with Payload Assist Module PAM-D boosters. One is the Canadian Telesat-F or Anik C-2 satellite and the other is the Indonesian government’s Palapa B-1 satellite. The fourth payload is the OSTA-2 pallet with a number of materials processing experiments. The OSTA gets its name from its NASA manager which is the Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications. The OSTA-2 pallet remains in the cargo bay for the entire mission and is the first in a series of planned orbital investigations of materials processing in the microgravity of space.  
  
The five-day, 23-hour mission of STS-7 will be a busy one for the five astronaut-member crew. Mission Specialist Dr. Norman Thagard will gather information during the flight on motion sickness and cardiovascular deconditioning countermeasures. In addition to the major payloads in the cargo bay, there will be seven Getaway Special GAS experiments. In the pressurized crew compartment of Challenger – the middeck – the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System CFES and the Monodisperse Latex Reactor MLR experiments will be flown again. No extravehicular activity, or spacewalk, is planned for STS-7.  
  
And at the end of the mission yet another first is scheduled: Challenger is to perform the first landing on the 3-mile long concrete runway located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. So flight STS-7 will become the first roundtrip for a Space Shuttle orbiter.

    STS-7 – CONFIGURATION  
  
Except for the installation of the 15.2-m (50-ft.) Canadian-built remote manipulator arm on the left mid-fuselage longeron, and the addition of a fifth crew seat on the middeck, orbiter Challenger is not greatly different than on STS-6. Challenger is fitted with three sets of cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen tanks for supplying fuel cell reactants. Because STS-7 will be the first shuttle mission with a total of five male and female crewmembers “confined in an area the size of a camper van for six days” (Ben Evans), a personal hygiene curtain has been installed in the crew compartment middeck.  
  
A Ku-band antenna has also been added to Challenger’s cargo bay at a forward starboard location and will be extended after opening of the spacecraft’s payload bay doors. The Ku-band antenna, along with the S-band system, will be used to test performance, navigation and proficiency of the communications system and also the Tracking and Data Relay System satellite (TDRS). The Ku-band antenna also will be tested for rendezvous radar system performance with the SPAS free-flying platform.  
  
The STS-7 payloads are arranged, starting from the aft bulkhead, with the Indonesian Palapa B-1, Telesat Canada Anik C-2, OSTA-2, and SPAS-01, six Get-Away Special experiment canisters are attached along the left longeron forward of the SPAS and the seventh canister bolted amidships on the right longeron. Orbiter performance data packages, the Mini-MADS Modular Auxiliary Data System and the ACIP Aerodynamics Coefficient Identification Package, are nested in the "bilge" below the payload bay between transverse fuselage frames.  
  
The Monodisperse Latex Reactor (MLR) and the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES) are on Challenger's crew compartment middeck.  
  
The three main engines for STS-7 are the same that were used during Challenger’s maiden flight: SSME 2017 in the #1 position, 2015 in the #2 position, and 2012 in the #3 position. SSME throttling during launch will be 104 to 75 to 104 to 3g limit to 65 percent. Challenger will be outfitted with the same set of OMS pods and FRCS module she was originally delivered with. LP01 (left pod), RP01 (right pod) and FRC9 were first used during STS-6. The left OMS secondary engine gimbal actuator controller and the left aft RCS engine L2D have been removed and replaced.  
  
44 eroded Advanced Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation AFRSI blankets (22 per OMS/RCS pod) have been removed at the forward outboard leading edge and replaced with approximately 284 (142 per OMS/RCS pod) Low Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation LRSI tiles. This still leaves approximately 94 AFRSI blankets, 47 per OMS/RCS pod. Also, ablators from the outboard end of each inboard elevon and inboard end of each outboard elevon have been removed and replaced with High Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation HRSI tiles. Approximately 72 tiles have been removed and replaced after STS-6 due to inflight or ground damage.  
  
On STS-7 the External Tank weighs approximately 4,536 kilograms (10,000 pounds) heavier than the LWT-1 Lightweight ET used on STS-6. SWT-6 is the last of the heavyweight, or Standard Weight Tanks. Lighter weight Solid Rocket Booster casings, like those on STS-6, will be used. Challenger, the ET and SRBs will have a total lift-off weight of 2,034,666 kilograms (4,485,597 pounds) compared to an STS-6 lift-off weight of 2,036,592 kilograms (4,489,843 pounds). Without cargo, crew, consumables, equipment, or "dry," Challenger will weigh 67,273.4 kilograms (148,310 pounds). The total payload weight “up” will be approximately 14,553 kilograms (32,085 pounds), “down” approximately 7,774 kilograms (17,139 pounds).  
  
  
STS-7 – LAUNCH  
  
STS-7 will be launched from Complex 39's Pad A at Kennedy Space Center no earlier than June 18, 1983. The launch opportunity opens for two brief periods on that date. The first window extends from 7:33 until 7:38 a.m. EDT, for a launch opportunity of five minutes in duration. The second window on that day opens at 8:24 a.m. EDT and closes at 8:26 a.m. EDT, for a launch opportunity of two minutes in duration.  
  
The opening of the first segment of the launch window is driven by the Earth Horizon Sensor (EHS) Sun "cutout" constraint on the Palapa B spacecraft for a revolution 19A injection. This opening time also roughly corresponds to the revolution 113 Edwards Air Force Base landing lighting constraint. This first segment is closed by an Earth Horizon Sensor constraint on the Anik C spacecraft for a revolution 8A injection.  
  
The opening of the second segment is driven by an earth horizon sensor Palapa B constraint for a revolution 19A injection. The second segment is closed by the aft thermal constraint on the Anik C for a revolution 8A injection.  
  
STS-7 will be launched on an azimuth of 92.25 degrees, resulting in an inclination to the equator of 28.45 degrees. Two burns of the twin Orbital Maneuvering System engines, the first at 10 minutes, 13 seconds Mission Elapsed Time and the second at 44 minutes, 23 seconds MET will circularize Challenger’s orbit at 160 nautical (185 statute) miles.

    STS-7 – PAYLOADS   
  
**Telesat-F / Anik C-2**  
  
Telesat Canada is a federally regulated shareholder-owned commercial Canadian telecommunications common carrier engaged in the transmission and distribution of all forms of telecommunications in Canada by satellite. Telesat is neither a Crown Corporation nor an agent of Her Majesty. Although the government of Canada is a major but not a majority shareholder, Telesat Canada does not have access to government grants or other funding. It is dependent for its financing on the revenues it generates through its operations and from banks and other commercials sources of debt financing.  
  
It was the intention of the government of Canada in establishing the company in 1969 that its services would be complementary to and not competitive with the telecommunications services offered by other Canadian carriers. The company has the statutory mandate to establish satellite communications systems providing, on a commercial basis, telecommunications services between locations in Canada and subject to the appropriate intergovernmental arrangements, to and between other locations.  
  
The Telesat-F, also called Anik (Inuit for “little brother”) when on orbit, series satellites will be the most powerful domestic satellites in commercial service until the latter half of the decade. In addition to the satellites which make up the space segment of the system, several hundred Earth stations, more than 100 of which are owned and operated by Telesat, compose the Earth segment. Telesat employs more than 400 people, most of whom work in the company’s Ottawa, Ontario headquarters. The majority of the remaining employees staff the company’s main heavy route Earth station at Allan Park, north of Toronto.  
  
The satellite will be worth close to $160 million (Canadian dollars) and will cost in the vicinity of $9 to $10 million (U.S. dollars) to launch on the Space Shuttle. The satellite weighs 1,140 kilograms (2,513 pounds) in the transfer orbit. Its solar cells are capable of producing 800 watts of electricity to power the satellite.  
  
Anik C communications satellites are cylindrical in shape and will operate exclusively in the high frequency 14 and 12 gigahertz radio bands, with 16 radio frequency channels (transponders). Each of these 16 channels will be capable of carrying two full color television signals, together with their associated audio and cue and control circuits, for a total television signal capacity of 32 programs or 1,344 one way telephone circuits.  
  
The combination of higher transmit power from 15-watt output tubes with use of the 14 and 12 gigahertz bands means that the satellite will be able to work with much smaller Earth stations than those in use today.  
  
Because of the smaller size, and the fact the higher frequencies in use won’t interfere (or be interfered with by) existing terrestrial microwave communications that share the lower frequencies used by other satellites, the Earth terminals can be located easily in relatively crowded spaces. They can be placed in city centers or mounted on rooftops of individual homes. Anik C’s will be able to deliver a high-quality television picture to a private Earth terminal equipped with a dish antenna as small as 1.2 meters (3.93 feet) in diameter, making it ideal for direct broadcast satellite services.  
  
Five of Anik C-2’s channels will be leased to the GTE Satellite Corporation of Stamford, Connecticut, until December 1984 for pay TV services. A Canada-U.S. agreement allows Telesat to sell temporarily surplus satellite capacity on an interim basis to American companies experiencing a shortage of satellite channels.  
  
Anik C-2 will be the primary in-orbit backup for its identical predecessor, Anik C-3, launched on 11 November 1982 from Columbia. Anik C-3 was on station 19 November 1982, at 117.5 degrees west longitude (south of the Canadian Rockies). Anik C-3 service currently carries Canadian pay TV, educational television and general long distance telecommunications traffic. Anik C-2 will be available to carry east-west telecommunications in southern Canada. Anik C-2 is planned to be stationed at 112.5 degrees west over the equator (south of Alberta). The remaining Anik C that will eventually join Anik C-2 and C-3 is planned to be stationed at 109 degrees west longitude over the equator.   
  
Each Anik C satellite measures more than 6.4 meters (21 feet) tall with concentric solar skirts and antennas fully deployed. Designed to last ten years, the satellites are expected to have minimum mission lives of around eight years. The three Anik C satellites are built for Telesat Canada by Hughes Aircraft Company, Space and Communications Group, El Segundo, California, with considerable work performed by Spar Aerospace Limited and other Canadian companies.

Palapa B-1 is the first of a second generation of communications satellites for Indonesia. Palapa A satellites have electronically linked Indonesia’s 13,677 islands (about 6,000 of which are inhabited) that curve along the equator for 5,100 kilometers (3,400 miles) and brought advanced communications to the nation’s 150 million inhabitants who speak over 250 languages besides the national language Bahasia Indonesia and encompasses a variety of cultures.  
  
“The word _‘palapa’_ translates to _‘fruits of labor’_ ,” says Ben Evans, “and, in Indonesian political ideology, has symbolized harmony and unity for centuries. Interestingly, the oath _‘amuktl palapa’_ , in ancient Javanese, literally means _‘relaxation after exertion’._  
  
The Indonesian government demonstrated foresight in recognizing early that communications satellites were the most economical and efficient way to handle geographic barriers and electronically link the people of Indonesia and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).  
  
Palapa B satellites are built for Indonesia by Hughes Aircraft Company Space and Communications Group of El Segundo, California. The $74.5 million fixed price contract calls for delivery of two spacecraft and their associated perigee stage vehicles under contract to Perumtel, Indonesia’s state-owned telecommunications company. Approximately six percent of the total price is paid on an incentive basis, and is dependent on satisfactory communications performance over a full eight-year mission life. Financing for the Palapa B satellites is provided by Eximbank in cooperation with major U.S. commercial banks.  
  
Perumtel records as an example show that between 1976 and 1981, long-distance telephone traffic increased from 1.3 million to 4.2 billion pulses with Palapa A. The seven-year service of Palapa A is now drawing to a close and the launch of the more powerful second generation Palapa B satellites assure continuity of communications services and supply expanded capacity to accommodate future growth.  
  
The Palapa system has contributed to government goals for national betterment. Television and radio broadcasts disseminate government policies and information, educational programs, and entertainment. Instantaneous communications and satellite-related job opportunities, direct and indirect, stimulate regional, national, and international economic activity. In addition, the Palapa system assists on the vigilant defense of Indonesia’s national security.  
  
A separate $5.4 million contract between Perumtel and Hughes Aircraft Systems International provides for ground equipment, services, and training. The master control station in Cibinong near Jakarta functions as the center of the system and will be expanded, and necessary modifications will also be made at Banduring and Cilacap ground stations. The master control station tracks and sends commands to the satellites and controls the telephone and television networks. New radio, control, and computer equipment has been added to the master control station for the expansion to the second-generation Palapa B satellites. Perumtel staff will continue to be entirely responsible for operation and maintenance of the Palapa system.

The Palapa A series, comprising two satellites launched by NASA in 1976 and 1977, was inaugurated with 40 ground stations to meet the expanding requirements of Perumtel and other users, a network of 125 Earth stations are now in operation. The increased power of Palapa B makes it possible to utilize stations with antennas 3 to 4.5 meters (9 to 14 feet) in diameter, as opposed to the 10 meter (32 feet) antennas at the original stations.  
  
The two new Palapa satellites are twice as big and have twice the capacity and four times the electrical power of the earlier built Palapa A satellites by Hughes: The new satellites provide 24 transponders, twice the number of Palapa A. The 24 transponders provide 12,000 two-way telephone calls or 24 color television programs or combinations thereof. A conservative estimate as the transponder capacity required up through 1990 is 12 for Indonesia and nine for other ASEAN members –  Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, a total of 21.  
  
The Palapa B satellites will bring improved quality and efficiency to the systems television, telephone, telegraph/telex, and data transmission services to Indonesia and the ASEAN members in addition to expanded coverage in remote and rural areas and to Papua New Guinea either of the two Palapa B satellites could satisfy these requirements with three transponders to spare for evolving needs; two satellites in orbit afford the safeguard of a complete backup or redundancy of the space system.  
  
The satellites will be placed in geosynchronous orbit, Palapa B-1 at 108 degrees east longitude and Palapa B-2 at 113 degrees east longitude. The Palapa B-2 satellite is at present scheduled for the STS-11 mission. The Palapa B satellites are similar to the Telesat satellites.   
  
Both “were of the Hughes HS-376 bus type,” Ben Evans explained in 2007. “These cylindrical, spin-stabilized drums measured 2.8 meters tall and 2.1 meters wide when stowed, but increased to more than twice that height in their final operating configurations. Both carried two concentric, telescoping solar panels – comprising 14,000 solar cells in total – which generated 1,100 watts of DC power to support ten-year life spans and carried their own 100 kilogram supplies of hydrazine fuel. Each also had an onboard power system, including rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, to run their communications payloads. Attached to the top of each satellite was a 1.7-meter diameter shared aperture grid antenna with two reflecting surfaces to provide transmission and reflection beams.”  
  
The Palapa B-1 satellite in the STS-7 mission will nominally be deployed on the descending node of orbit 18 over the Atlantic Ocean, Mission Elapsed Time of day one at approximately two hours and three minutes. The predeploy, ejection and sequence of events for placement at geosynchronous orbit are similar to the Telesat-F sequences.   
  
The Payload Assist Module is automatically set to fire its solid propellant motor 45 minutes after deployment. About 15 minutes after the spacecraft is ejected from the payload bay, the orbiter will perform an evasive maneuver to make sure it is at least 14.8 to 18.5 km (8 to 10 miles) away from the satellite when the motor ignites. This firing will punch the satellite into an egg-shaped transfer orbit with a high point 36,000 km (22,300 mi.) above the equator. On a selected apogee, a solid propellant motor on the spacecraft is fired to circularize the orbit at the geosynchronous altitude.

The Payload Assist Module (formerly called the Spinning Solid Upper Stage – SSUS) is designed as a higher altitude booster of satellites deployed in near Earth orbit but operationally destined for higher altitudes. Both comsats carried in STS-7 – the Telesat-F and Palapa B-1 – will be boosted to geosynchronous orbits by PAM-Ds. The Payload Assist Modules are designed and built by McDonnell Douglas Astronautics, Co., Huntington Beach, California.  
  
There are two versions of the PAM – the “D” which is used to launch lighter-weight satellites and the “A” which is capable of launching satellites weighing up to 1,995 kilograms (4,400 pounds) into a 27-degree geosynchronous transfer orbit after being deployed from the shuttle spacecraft’s cargo bay.  
  
The PAM-D is capable of launching satellite weights up to 1,247 kilograms (2,750 pounds) into a 27-degree geosynchronous orbit following deployment. A requirement for a 1,361 kilogram (3,000 pound) transfer orbit capability requires about a ten-percent increase in the PAM-D motor performance, which can be accomplished by adding more length to the motor case, but reducing the nozzle length the same amount to retain the overall stage length. The motor case extension is about 137 millimeters (5.4 inches). This uprating will require other changes, namely the strengthening and addition of cradle members so that the system structural dynamic frequency will avoid the Space Shuttle forcing frequencies.  
  
  
PAM-D VEHICLE CONFIGURATION  
  
The PAM-D expendable vehicle hardware consists of a Thiokol Star-48 solid-fueled rocket motor, the Payload Attach Fitting (PAF) and its functional system. The Star-48 motor features a titanium case, an 89-percent solid propellant, a carbon-carbon throat insert, and a carbon-carbon exit cone. Maximum loading of propellant is 1,998 kilograms (4,405 pounds) with a nominal of 1,738 kilograms (3,833 pounds). The motor is 1,239 millimeters (48,8 inches) in diameter and 1,828 millimeters (72 inches) long.  
  
The PAF structure is a machined forging and provides the subsystem mounting installations and mounts on the forward ring of the motor case. The two cradle reaction fittings provide structural support to the forward end of the PAM-D stage and unmanned spacecraft, and transmit loads to the ASE cradle structure. The forward interface of the PAF provides the spacecraft mounting and separation system.   
  
One steel band is preloaded to approximately 2,585 kilograms (5,700 pounds) and separation is achieved by redundant bolt cutters. Four separation springs, mounted inside the PAF provide the impetus for clear separation. The installed preload for each spring is approximately 90 kilograms (200 pounds) with a spring stroke of 133 millimeters (5.25 inches), providing a spacecraft separation velocity of about 0.9 meters per second ( 3 feet per second).   
  
The electrical interface connectors between the PAM-D and the spacecraft are mounted on brackets on opposite sides of the PAF. Other subsystems mounted on the PAF include the redundant safe-and-arm device for motor ignition, and telemetry components (if desired) and the S-band transmitter.

For launch the Telesat-F spacecraft is compressed to a height of about 2.7 meters (9 feet) and positioned in its cradle in the orbiter cargo bay. With the PAM, the payload is 4.2 meters (14 feet) tall. The payload ejected from the bay weighs about 3,270 kilograms (7,211 pounds). This includes the Payload Assist Module PAM-D which weighs 190 kilograms (421 pounds) with 1,963 kilograms (4,328 pounds) of solid propellant for thrusting the satellite from parking orbit to transfer orbit; an apogee motor with 493 kilograms (1,089 pounds) gross weight of solid propellant for injecting the satellite into synchronous orbit; and the satellite itself – 622 kilograms (1,373 pounds) including about 148 kilograms (327 pounds) of hydrazine fuel for eight to nine years of station keeping operations.  
  
Before ejection, the deployable payload is supported by its cradle and electronics system. The cradle looks like an oversized version of Pacman, according to Ben Evans’ 2007 book, “for when the protective sunshades opened to expose the satellites shortly prior to deployment, they looked just like a pair of jaws from the children’s game. Fortunately, unlike the real Pacman, these jaws were designed to release something, rather than gobble it up.”  
  
“Each cradle was composed of a series of machined aluminum frames and chrome-plated steel longeron and keel trunnion fittings, covered with Mylar insulation and measuring 2.4 meters long and 4.6 meters wide. At the base of the cradle was a turntable that used two electric motors to impart the required spin rate, which varied between 45 and 100 revolutions per minute, depending on the stability needs of the payload, together with a spring ejection system to release the satellite and its booster. During ascent, two restraint arms held the precious satellites steady inside their sunshades and, shortly after reaching space, the Pacman jaws were closed to protect them from the thermal extremes of low-Erath orbit. At operational geosynchronous altitudes, on the other hand, they would rotate to even out thermal stresses.”  
  
To prepare for cargo ejection, the orbiter flight crew verifies the spacecraft through a series of checks and configures the payload for deployment. The orbiter is at approximately 160 nautical miles (184 statute miles) altitude for spacecraft deployment. The satellite is spun up to 50 rpm on the cradle’s spin table, communications and other subsystems are checked by means of an electrical and communications harness to the flight crew cabin, and the payload ordnance items are armed. All the checks are performed remotely from the flight crew cabin, and payload data are transmitted from the orbiter to the Mission Control Center in Houston for analysis.  
  
During a final pre-ejection sequence lasting approximately 30 minutes, the orbiter is maneuvered into a deployment attitude with the open cargo bay facing the direction desired for firing the PAM motor.  
  
Ejection will occur, nominally, about nine and one-half hours after lift-off when the orbiter is over the Pacific Ocean on the seventh descending node (heading south from the equator on its seventh orbit). A Marman clamp is released by explosive bolts, and the spinning payload pops out of the cradle and cargo bay at 0.9 meters per second (3 feet per second).  
  
At ejection from the orbiter cargo bay, the Telesat-F spacecraft has completed only the first of several critical launch events. At this point it is in an orbit similar to that of the shuttle orbiter with an altitude of about 160 nautical miles (185 statute miles), a velocity of about 27,835 kilometers per hour (17,300 mph), an inclination to the equator of 28.5 degrees, and a period of 90 minutes.  
  
To perform its intended communications service, the spacecraft must be raised to an altitude of about 36,851 kilometers (22,898 statute miles), with a velocity of about 10,941 kilometers per hour (6,800 mph), at a zero-degree inclination to the equator and a period of 24 hours.  
  
The first in a series of major in-orbit events is the firing of the soli-propellant motor aboard the payload’s PAM. At ejection, this motor is armed to automatically fire in 45 minutes. Spacecraft sensors and thrusters automatically maintain the payload’s correct attitude (longitudinal axis included nine degrees to the equator) for firing. At the time of firing, the spacecraft is over Africa.  
  
The PAM motor firing raises the apogee of the orbit to about 36,851 kilometers (22,898 statute miles). Now the spacecraft is in a highly elliptical transfer orbit with a perigee of about 157 nautical miles (182 statute miles), an orbital period of 11 hours, and an inclination to the equator of 23.8 degrees. The PAM motor casing is jettisoned after firing.  
  
Nominally, on the third apogee of the transfer orbit, an onboard solid-fuel motor (or apogee motor) is fired to raise the perigee of the orbit. This puts the spacecraft into a near-circular orbit at near-geosynchronous altitude. The apogee motor will be fired on command by controllers at Telesat Satellite Control Center in Ottawa, Ontario.  
  
Next comes a series of spacecraft thruster firings by Telesat controllers to refine the orbit and adjust spacecraft velocity so that a controlled drift will bring it to its final destination in two to three weeks. Three other critical maneuvers, in sequence, are the despin of the communications platform, the raising of the spacecraft’s antenna reflector, and the lowering of its solar panel skirt, all by means of onboard electric motors activated on command.  
  
When the maneuvers are completed, Telesat conducts a series of in-orbit tests and verifications of all spacecraft subsystems, lasting several weeks, before commercial service is begun. NASA’s responsibility for the launch mission is completed upon the satellite’s ejection from the orbiter, except for tracking of the payload until the PAM is fired.

SPAS-01 is the first reusable satellite to be taken into Earth orbit and back. From Challenger’s payload bay it will be deployed in space using the Remote Manipulator System, then released allowing the SPAS-01 to fly as a free-flyer. Several hours later it will be retrieved by the RMS arm and berthed in Challenger’s payload bay. SPAS-01 is also the first satellite from a private company in Europe that demonstrates how spaceflights can be used for private enterprise purposes.  
  
  
SPAS-01 was developed by the West German firm Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm GmbH (MBB). NASA and MBB signed an agreement in June 1981 at MBB Space Division Headquarters in Bremen, Federal Republic of Germany, for launch services to be provided by NASA, in addition to the use of the RMS. The German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology (BMFT – Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie) has promoted the SPAS-01 pilot project and contributed substantially to the funding.  
  
Six scientific experiments from BMFT, the main customer, and two from the European Space Agency (ESA), are the first European “passengers” on SPAS-01. The third user of SPAS-01 is NASA. NASA is assuming a major part of the launch costs of SPAS-01. NASA will use SPAS-01 in testing the Remote Manipulator System deployment and retrieval operation and assesses Challenger’s operating behavior when deploying and recovering SPAS-01. NASA has equipped SPAS-01 with a 70mm Hasselblad photo camera, a 16mm film camera and a color/black/white television camera. These cameras will record Challenger’s entire operational behavior for the first time from a platform outside the spacecraft. In addition NASA can record the satellite’s flight behavior from cameras aboard Challenger. SPAS-01 is controlled by its onboard stabilization and control system during the free-flyer operation.  
  
Total development and production costs for the basic SPAS is about $13 million including cost of the first launch. Another $8 to $10 million has been spent for the experiment packages on SPAS-01. MBB expects BMFT and ESA to pay about $7 million for the first flight. NASA is providing about $2.5 million in launch services. All but $4 million of the total MBB development costs will be returned in the first flight and SPAS-01 will be available for a second flight after minor refurbishing. MBB believes that its capability to support both commercial and scientific research packages and lower costs sufficiently to open space to a new group of users. MBB designed the basic SPAS to be reused in space for at least five separate missions.  
  
The SPAS-01 structure is 4.2 meters (13.7 feet) long and 0.7 meters (2.2 feet) wide. Fully equipped SPAS-01 weighs 1,500 kilograms (3,307 pounds) and is 1.5 meters (5 feet). The SPAS-01 payload is 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds). The structure is constructed of carbon fiber tubes 60 millimeters (2.3 inches) in diameter and 0.7 meter (2.2 feet) in length linked by titanium connectors. The tubes form a grid structure composed of segments each measuring 0.7 x 0.7 x 0.7 meter (2.2 x 2.2 x 2.2 feet). The basic measurement can be used in any way required.  
  
The SPAS-01 structure is statically attached by three trunions in Challenger’s payload bay. Two trunions are attached to Challenger’s payload bay port and starboard longeron sill and one trunion to Challenger’s keel fitting at orbiter station Xo895.93. Other subsystems are also modular, such as power supply, data processing and attitude stabilization. The data handling system is a multi-redundant modular digital system (MODUS). This “brain” of the system covers telemetry, encoding and decoding as well as attitude control logic tasks. SPAS-01 also has radio and radar facilities, 28V dc battery power and can provide a gravity gradient or gas nozzle attitude control system. The reaction control thrusters are made up of four blocks of three each for a total of 12 thrusters.

Two mission phases are planned for SPAS-01. In the first phase, some of the satellite’s experiments will be used for scientific research while attached to Challenger’s payload bay. The second phase is the free-flyer phase in which SPAS-01 will be used as a test article and also some of the SPAS experiments will be operated during free flight.  
  
SPAS-01 will be grappled by the RMS, and then released from Challenger’s payload bay longeron sill and keel fitting retention mechanisms by electrical motors. The RMS will unberth SPAS-01 and will maneuver it over Challenger’s payload bay. SPAS-01 will be automatically released from the RMS, and then captured. Then SPAS-01 will be released manually from the RMS arm, allowing it to be in a free-flyer mode. In free-flyer proximity operations, the satellite is supported by its own subsystem power, attitude control (cold gas-compressed nitrogen) thrusters, data handling and telemetry/command, position lights, and markings to facilitate Challenger proximity test operations.  
  
In the first free-flyer proximity mode, Challenger will drift down and forward of SPAS-01 approximately 304 meters (1,000 feet). During this sequence long-range skin tracking and radar tests are accomplished between Challenger and SPAS-01. Challenger will then approach the SPAS and the RMS will automatically capture the satellite over the payload bay. SPAS-01 is then released and rotated, followed by capture. Mission Specialist John Fabian is controlling the RMS in this first free-flying proximity mode operation.  
  
Approximately one hour later, SPAS-01 will again be released from the RMS in a free-flyer mode. SPAS is released from the RMS in a simulated backup mode over the Crewman Optical Alignment Sight (COAS). Challenger will fly forward, up and down to a distance of approximately 60 meters (200 feet) from the satellite. During this inertial fly around, Challenger’s RCS upward engines will be fired at nine different locations to determine plume survey effects on SPAS-01 at a distance of approximately 10 to 30 meters (35 to 100 feet). It is noted that SPAS will be held in attitude control by its own system.   
  
During this sequence, short range skin and radar tests are accomplished. Challenger will then approach and capture the SPAS with the RMS over the COAS automatically. This will be followed by a release of SPAS-01 automatically, followed by a single RMS joint track and capture of the satellite by the arm over COAS. SPAS-01 will then be deactivated and berthed in the payload bay, latched at the orbiter longeron sill and keel fitting by electrically operated retention mechanisms. The satellite will be released then by the RMS and the arm will be berthed and powered down ending the proximity operations. Mission Specialist Sally Ride is controlling the RMS in this second free-flying proximity mode operation.  
  
The detached operations with the SPAS on flight day four will enable NASA to carry out all objectives which are important for future flights involving use of the shuttle to retrieve actual satellites, such as the Solar Maximum Mission repair scheduled during STS-13.

“Although the most visible elements of STS-7 were the launching of three satellites and the presence of Sally Ride, a vast amount of valuable research was being monitored and conducted autonomously by NASA’s Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications OSTA-2 payload,” Ben Evans wrote in 2007. “Although this was the second time the office had flown a set of experiments aboard the shuttle – the first was aboard Columbia on STS-2 in November 1981 – the 1,448 kilogram OSTA marked the first use of the Mission Peculiar Equipment Support Structure (MPESS) in the payload bay.”  
  
The OSTA-2 payload is comprised of four instrument packages containing six experiments. It will be the first in a series of planned orbital investigations of materials processing in space. The payload, managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center, is among the first cooperative international research projects to be conducted on the Space Shuttle. The materials processing mission was developed by NASA and the Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt DFVLR (German Aerospace Research Establishment).   
  
Besides providing the apparatus for this joint investigation of materials processing, scientists from each country will share experimental data and exchange analytical information about crystal growth, containerless production of glass, and metallurgical processes in space.

The Getaway Special (GAS), officially titled Small Self-Contained Payloads (SSCPs), is offered by NASA to provide anyone who wishes the opportunity to fly a small experiment aboard the Space Shuttle.   
  
Since the offer was first announced in the fall of 1976, more than 326 GAS reservations have been made by over 197 individuals and groups. Payload spaces have been reserved by several foreign governments and individuals: United States industrialists, foundations, high schools, colleges and universities, professional societies, service clubs and many others. Although many reservations have been obtained by persons and groups having an obvious interest in space research, a large number of spaces have been reserved by persons and organizations entirely outside the space community.  
  
There are no stringent requirements to qualify for spaceflight, but the payload must meet safety criteria and must have a scientific or technological objective. A person who wishes to fly items of a commemorative nature, such as medallions for later resale as “objects that have flown in space,” would be refused.  
  
GAS requests must first be approved at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. by the Director, Space Transportation Systems Utilization Office, Code OT6. It is at this point that requests for Space Shuttle space are screened for propriety, and scientific or technical aim. These requests must be accompanied or preceded by the payment of $500 earnest money.  
  
Requests approved by the Space Transportation Systems Utilization Office are given a payload identification number and referred to the GAS Team at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. The Center has been designated the lead center or direct manager for the project.  
  
The GAS Team screens the proposal for safety and provides advice and consultation for payload design. The GAS Team certifies that the proposed payload is safe, that it will not harm or interfere with the operations of the Space Shuttle, its crew, or other experiments on the flight. If any physical testing must be done on the payload to answer safety questions prior to the launch, the expense of these tests must be borne by the customer.  
  
In flight, the flight crew will turn on and off up to three payload switches, but there will be no opportunity for flight crew monitoring of GAS experiments or any form of inflight servicing.  
  
The cost of this unique service will depend on the size and weight of the experiment; Getaway Specials of 90 kilograms (200 pounds) and 0.14 cubic meters (5 cubic feet) may be flown at a cost of $10,000; 45 kilograms (100 pounds) and 0.07 cubic meter (2.5 cubic feet) for $5,000, and 27 kilograms (60 pounds) and 0.07 cubic meter (2.5 cubic feet) at $3,000. These prices remain fixed for the first three years of Space Shuttle operations.  
  
The GAS container provides for internal pressure which can be varied from near vacuum to about one atmosphere. The bottom and sides of the container are always thermally insulated and the top may be insulated or not depending on the specific experiment; an opening lid or one with a window may be required. These may be offered as additional options. The weight of the GAS container, experiment mounting plate and its attachment screws, and all the hardware regularly supplied by NASA is not charged to the experimenter’s weight allowance.  
  
The GAS container is made of aluminum and the circular end plates are 15 millimeters (5/8 inch) thick aluminum. The bottom 76 millimeters (3 inches) of the container is reserved for NASA interface equipment such as command decoders and pressure regulating systems. The container is a pressure vessel capable of evacuation prior to launch, or evacuation during launch and repressurization during reentry, or maintaining about one atmosphere pressure at all times, evacuation and repressurization during orbit as provided by the experimenter.  
  
The experimenters’ payload enveloped in the 0.14 cubic meter (5 cubic feet) container are 501 millimeters (19.95 inches) in diameter and 717 millimeters (28.25 inches) in length. The payload envelop in the 0.07 cubic meter (2.5 cubic feet) container is 501 millimeters in diameter and 358 millimeters (14 inches) in length.

Beginning with the STS-7 mission, the GAS Team has inaugurated a new facility dedicated to the preparation of GAS payloads. The facility is located in the old Delta third-stage facility on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.  
  
Seven GAS containers are aboard the Challenger for the STS-7 mission. These seven GAS experiments have been conceived, designed and built by people who range from high school students to college students, and teachers as well as engineers and technicians from small business and large corporations.  
  
Six of the GAS containers require active participation by the flight crew while one GAS container will be turned on by a barometer switch. Six GAS canisters are attached to the port (left) side of Challenger’s payload bay and one to the starboard (right) side. One GAS canister by the U.S. Air Force Space division will be the first to use a motorized door assembly.  
  
Prior to the STS-7 mission, five GAS canisters have been flown, one on STS-4, one on STS-5, Three on STS-6 and with the inclusion of STS-7, a total of twelve GAS canisters will have been flown.  
  
  
 **G-002** will carry five experiments selected in a nationwide competition between high school students in West Germany. Kayser-Threde, a small West German aerospace company sponsored the experiment. “Jugend forscht,” (“Youth researches”), a non-profit foundation that organizes an annual nationwide competition among high school students covers all areas of science and technology and selected the five experiments to be flown. The five experiments are contained in one 0.14 cubic meter (5 cubic feet) canister with a 90 kilogram (200 pound) capacity. The total mission time for these five experiments ranges from 72 hours up to 84 hours. These experiments desire two vernier RCS attitude control periods of eight to ten hours each.  
  
The crystal growth experiment by Michael Pascherat (22) will observe the growth of a crystal in a liquid salt solution under the microgravity environment. Density structures of the solution around the growing crystal will be detected by a laser interferometer and registered by a photographic camera.  
  
The nickel catalysts experiment by Herbert Riepl (21) will manufacture nickel catalysts by thermal processing of four specimen cartridges inside a furnace. Each cartridge contains a mixture of raw material and dry nitrogen.  
  
The plant contamination experiment by Heinz Katzenmeier (19) will determine the transport mechanisms of heavy metals in plants using watercress shoots. Three growth compartments contain seeds, liquids for initiation and fixation as well as air at atmospheric pressure. Temperature will be closely controlled. Three 12-hour day/night cycles are simulated by LED arrays.  
  
The biostack experiment by Marcus Buchwald (17) is designed to determine the influence of cosmic radiation on plant seeds. Different specimen are embedded in containers and exposed to radiation. Detector foils are used to determine radiation density.  
  
The microprocessor-controlled sequencer by Gunnar Possekel (24) uses a new approach for payload control and sequencing at low power consumption.

     **G-305** by the U.S. Air Force Space Division’s Space Test Program/Naval Research Laboratory is a 0.14 cubic meter (5 cubic feet) canister with 90 kilograms (200 pound) capacity. This GAS canister makes use of an optional opening cover. The first experiment to be carried in the GAS canister with an opening lid is the Space Ultraviolet Radiation Environment (SURE) instrument developed in the Space Science Division at the Naval Research Laboratory.  
  
SURE is a self-contained payload designed to measure the natural radiation field in the upper atmosphere at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths between 50 and 100 nanometers. The hardware consists of a spectrometer which separates the wavelength band into two intervals of 128 discrete wavelengths. The radiation intensity at each wavelength is measured and stored on a tape recorder within the SURE payload. The spectrometer will observe emissions out of the Challenger’s payload bay along the negative Z-axis. One attitude maneuver is desired for this experiment.  
  
The radiation field in the EUV band is produced through the action of sunlight on the outer atmosphere above 100 kilometers (62 statute miles) and photochemical processes during the day and night. By observing the radiation at discrete wavelengths, signatures of atmospheric and ionospheric atoms, molecules and ions, and the electron density can be obtained. Thus, measurements of the upper atmosphere radiation field in the EUV provide a means of remotely sensing the ionosphere and upper atmosphere.  
  
The SURE experiment is the first of a series to be developed at Naval Research Laboratory which ultimately will have the capability of observing “ionospheric weather.” It is envisioned that in the future satellites will be stationed at high altitudes to provide global pictures of ionospheric weather conditions. Ionospheric storms or the effects of unusual events, such as solar flares or eruptions, could be monitored and their evolution accurately followed. Effects on communication systems could be observed immediately at any place on the globe.  
  
The SURE experiment is being integrated under the auspices of the Department of Defense Space Test Program, managed by the USAF Space Division, Space Test Program Office, Los Angeles, California. On-site Navy management and technical support is provided by the Navy Space Systems Activity collocated with the USAF Space Division.  
  
  
 **G-009** was donated by Dr. Harold Ritchey, an alumnus of Purdue University for use by Purdue University. A program was established within the School of Science which provided undergraduates and graduates with the opportunity to acquire experience with real problems in science and engineering beyond the traditional “paper” analysis or design projects. In the spring of 1978, experiment proposals were solicited from students by a faculty committee headed by Professor John T. Snow of the Department of Geosciences at Purdue University.  
  
Three experiments were eventually selected and developed. The three experiments are housed in one 0.07 cubic meter (2.5 cubic feet) canister with a 45 kilogram (100 pound) capacity. The actual development of the flight hardware was supported by the School of Science, The School of Engineering, the School of Technology, and the School of Agriculture of Purdue University. Numerous gifts of materials and supplies have been received from private industry. The U.S. Navy gave access to test facilities. The National Science Foundation provided support for three students to work full time on the project during the summer of 1980.   
  
G-009 desires an attitude maneuver after the experiment starts. It includes batteries, temperature control system and an electronic control package. The experiments are entirely self-sufficient except for the three on/off switches through the autonomous payload controller under flight crew control.  
  
The space science experiment, the Nuclear Particle Detection experiment, is to detect nuclear particles that may be encountered in the near-Earth space environment, and to record their subsequent paths as they penetrate a stack of sensitive plastic sheets. The information obtained from post-flight, 3-D analysis of the paths will serve to determine their energy and identify the detected particles.  
  
The biological experiment, the Seed Germination experiment, will us sunflower seeds and allow the seeds to germinate in the low-gravity environment for a period of 72 hours. In this way, the effect of gravity on the germination and growth of seeds, geotropism (any movement or growth of a living organism in response to the force of gravity – positive geotropism is roots growing downward towards Earth – negative geotropism is away from Earth) will be studied. The experiment includes a simple life-support system and a subsystem for preserving the sprouts for post-flight investigation.  
  
The fluid dynamics experiment will study the motion in very low gravity conditions of a drop of mercury immersed in a clear liquid. This motion will be recorded on film, and measurements of the bulk oscillations of this drop will then be made and compared to theory. The development of this experiment presented real challenges in optics and camera design.  
  
  
 **G-033** is sponsored by the California Institute of Technology. The two experiments are located in one 0.14 cubic meter (5 cubic feet) GAS canister with a 90 kilogram (200 pound) capacity. One experiment will test how new-sprouted radish seeds respond to microgravity of space and test the concept that gravity forces dense structures called amyloplasts to settle to the bottom of cells in root tips, which in turn cause the roots to grow downward (geotropism).  
  
The second experiment will mix oil and water and see how they separate over a 96-hour period and will be taking photographs during this period for interest in space manufacturing, to allow predictions about possibilities of manufacturing materials such as improved metal alloys and semi-conductors in zero-g.  
  
  
 **G-088** by “Engineering Design to Suit Your Needs” EDSYN Incorporated, an engineering firm in Van Nuys, California, is to investigate the process of soldering and desoldering in a space environment. Nine experiments are contained in one 0.07 cubic meter (2.5 cubic feet) canister with a 27 kilogram (60 pound) capacity. These experiments will investigate the inevitable soldering/desoldering repair in space of electrical connections and electronic units as well as manufacturing in space.   
  
The experiment planning to date has already indicated a number of modifications that will be required of the usual Earth-based techniques, particularly for unsoldering and repair (floating solder debris and fumes). One period of vernier RCS attitude control is desired for the duration of the experiment.  
  
The dynamic flux behavior experiment is designed to determine the best choice of flux to be used in a space environment. A comparison will be made between a quadrant soldered on Earth and one that has been soldered in space. The Dynamic wetting and surface tension I experiment is designed to measure wetting and surface tension. This test consists of four wires connected to a heating element and bent in such a manner that the wires form a gap for the solder to flow across. The result will be compared with samples prepared on the ground.  
  
The dynamic wetting and surface tension II wire braid wick experiment is designed to determine the solder wetting and surface tension characteristics that relate to the ability of solder to bridge gaps. They will be compared with samples on the ground. The Dynamic metallurgical properties experiment is designed to remelt solder in eyelet and twisted pairs for later cross sectioning and analysis plus determining whether significant contaminants (vapors) are produced during rework operations in space.  
  
The dynamic desoldering I experiment is designed to determine if contamination resulted from the use of conventional solder and desoldering tools can be controlled by surface tension/wicking. The amount of solder that has been removed to the tip will be compared with samples prepared on the ground. The dynamic desoldering space experiment is designed to determine if solder can be removed from a printed circuit board by use of a hollow-tube soldering tube with a hole through the tip and back up through the heater. This test will determine if solder can be removed using air/pressure.  
  
The dynamic general contamination experiment is designed to determine if the basic operation of a soldering tool in space will produce any significant contamination to the space environment. The dynamic solder removal experiment is designed to determine if an integrated circuit can be removed with a multiple head desoldering tool that applies heat then absorbs solder into a braid mesh and for each solder hole in a circuit board.  
  
The static experiment is designed to determine if basic solder tools can be used in space without the requirement of remaining pressurized as they are transported from one spacecraft to another or if personnel must repair a satellite in space, when the repair must be made outside a repair shop environment.  
  
  
 **G-345** is conducted by Dr. Werner Neupert of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Bethesda, Maryland. The experiment is in one 0.14 cubic meter (5 cubic feet) GAS canister with a 90 kilogram (200 pound) capacity. The experiment is designed to measure the effect of Challenger’s payload bay environment on extreme ultraviolet-sensitive film. Twelve stainless steel canisters, each containing unexposed strips of film, will be place inside the one GAS canister.   
  
Seven of the canisters are located inside a large stainless steel cylinder which is initially sealed off from the outside environment by means of a motor-driven valve located between the central purge port of the GAS cover and the large stainless-steel cylinder. Initially, each of the seven cylinders is open to the exterior of the large container. After the experiment timer opens the large container valve, the valves of the individual film canisters are closed at various intervals so film strips are exposed to the Challenger’s payload bay environment for varying periods of time.   
  
One canister within the large container remains sealed throughout the flight as a control unit. Five canisters mounted on the outside of the large container will be used for a variety of film tests.

**G-012** , sponsored by RCA Corporation which also supplied technical guidance to students from Camden and Wilson High Schools in Camden, New Jersey, will observe a live ant colony. The ant colony experiment is in one 0.14 cubic meter (5 cubic feet) GAS canister with a 90 kilogram (200 pound) capacity. The ants will be housed in a special farm and placed in a GAS canister, along with television and movie cameras, to see whether weightlessness will affect the colony’s social structure. The ants are carpenter ants supplied by Temple University, along with wood chips within the canister for food. The experiment is designed to provide information useful to humans who may colonize space someday.

The Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES) experiment is a pharmaceutical production device designed to demonstrate that pharmaceuticals of marketable purity can be produced in quality in the zero gravity of space. This is the first of many steps leading to a possible commercial operation in space of “space factories.” It provides a processing system which can segregate biological samples using a separation process based on the relative motion of charged particles through an electric field, i.e. electrophoresis.  
  
The U.S. Materials Processing in Space (MPS) program is designed to accommodate applied research payloads on economically viable materials, technology, and industrial processes in space and is part of a space processing applications program. It is hoped that this technology will develop products that cannot be produced on Earth, or that can be improved greatly by being processed in space. NASA is confident that these payloads will advance new product technology and make significant contributions to American industry for many years.  
  
On Earth, people accept the pull of gravity and the atmosphere as essential elements in their existence. Weight is the balance between the Earth’s gravitational attraction and the centrifugal force caused by the Earth’s constant high-speed rotation. It is commonly thought of as a force pulling the body or object downward; we refer to it as a force of one-g at sea level. In space (Earth orbit), the gravitational attraction of Earth to an object is reduced as the object moves away from Earth, while centrifugal force increases as it moves faster. In a stable orbit, the two forces equal and cancel each other. This is referred to as zero-g or weightlessness.  
  
Until orbital spaceflights became possible, a zero-gravity environment could be produced only for very short periods in free fall. Drop towers, aircraft nose-overs, and sounding rocket coast periods could provide periods of zero or reduced gravity lasting from a few seconds to six minutes.  
  
Gravity and the atmosphere of ten pose serious problems in the manufacturing of certain very important products. The space environment, with its zero-gravity and almost perfect vacuum, offers interesting possibilities for large-scale manufacturing of products. Space processing can provide advantages by lowering costs through the more efficient processing available in space. More frequently, it provides the capability for producing substances or devices that cannot be produced in the presence of gravity and an atmosphere.  
  
Examples of the difference between Earth and space environments are the effects of gravity on the process of sedimentation and convection. An example of sedimentation is fruit gelatin dessert; the gelatin must be allowed to thicken to a certain extent before adding fruit or the fruit will settle to the bottom. Sedimentation is caused by the effect of gravity on mixtures of solid particles in liquids.  
  
Convection is either the upward movement of part of a gas or liquid that is heated, or the downward movement of a gas or liquid that is cooled. It is caused by the difference in gravity-force-weight or buoyancy which occurs at different temperatures. Wind is an example of natural convection of the air; the currents observed in a heated glass pot of water are another example.  
  
In space, sedimentation and convection are virtually absent. A liquid mixture containing materials of greatly differing densities can be solidified without the materials separating. Without convection, some parts of the liquid mixture will get much hotter or colder than on Earth. This enables control of the way liquids solidify and thereby control of the product produced. The lack of gravitational forces in space also allows liquids to levitate, or float freely, so that processes that are impossible on Earth can be conducted in space because the liquids to be processed would react with their containers.  
  
The electrophoresis method separated biological materials such as human cells, by means of an electrical field (electrical voltage force). In zero-g, the cells will separate because each cell reacts in a different degree to the electrical field. Electrophoresis is not a new process. It has been widely used in blood and urine analysis. However, sedimentation becomes a serious problem in electrophoresis on Earth if the particles to be separated are large and heavy, since the gravitational forces on the particles become large relative to the electrophoresis forces. Convection also causes currents that tend to remix the separate factions.  
  
In recent years, scientists have determined that cures or greatly improved treatments for a number of diseases might be possible using certain cells, enzymes, hormones or proteins. One problem has been that these substances are not available in the quantity or purity needed.  
  
In the electrophoresis process, gravity limits the concentration of starting material to be used and thus the output of the process itself. On Earth the starting must be diluted to only about 0.1 percent by weight in order for its density to equal that of the carrier fluid a condition necessary for proper suspension and successful separation. In space, these concentrations can be increased to at least 10 percent and as high as 40 percent and still remain suspended in the carrier fluid. This increased concentration means that an electrophoretic chamber in space could turn out 100 to 400 times as much as a chamber on the ground in the same length of time – thereby providing the premise marketable quantities of the product can be obtained.  
  
Processing in space offers the additional benefit of improved product purity. On Earth, as starting material separates into individual streams, gravity acts on the density differences between them and the carrier fluid. This phenomenon causes the streams to widen and overlap, which in turn limits the purity of the output product. Because this overlapping phenomenon does not occur as extensively in the microgravity of space, product purity will increase. Analyses indicate that product purity will increase by a factor of about five.  
  
Extensive analytical and experimental work has been accomplished by a skilled team of engineers and scientists representing such disciplines as fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, microbiology, and biochemistry. They continued to develop improved laboratory electrophoresis units so that, by optimizing Earth performance, they could understand the limitations of the process. When gravity effects are removed, they predict a significant improvement of the process and thus larger quantity and greater purity.  
  
  
THEN  
  
The Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System experiment in the STS-6 flight achieved four times better purification of biological materials and also demonstrated that it can separate over 700 times the quantity obtainable in similar ground-based units here on Earth.   
  
In order to achieve the greater purity in the STS-6 flight, two changes were made. The voltage applied across the chamber was increased from 140 to 400 volts and the amount of time the materials remained in the chamber was increased by 60 percent. Three samples were run on each of two days in the flight.  
  
The samples separated were a laboratory standard mixture of rat and egg albumins, a cell culture fluid containing many types of proteins and two samples of hemoglobin. The hemoglobin was tested for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. One sample contained only hemoglobin and a second sample contained a mixture of hemoglobin and polysaccharide (a complex sugar). The hemoglobin sample, at 10 times the concentration that can be processed in an Earth-based laboratory, was designed to explore the concentration limits of electrophoresis in space.   
  
The results are still being analyzed, although scientists did note some unexpected broadening of the sample flow. The sample of a mixture of hemoglobin and a polysaccharide was separated to determine the quality in a space-based electrophoresis device. The sample with a lower concentration of hemoglobin provided data showing a good separation of the biological materials.  
  
  
NOW  
  
In the STS-7 flight, CFES will be used by McDonnell Douglas for separation tests to identify other materials that might be candidates for commercial development. NASA’s use of CFES, through Marshall Space Flight Center’s Space Science Laboratory, is part of the consideration provided to the space agency under terms of the NASA/McDonnell Douglas Joint Endeavor Agreement. This agreement provides a vehicle for private enterprise and NASA to work together to promote the utilization of space where a technological advancement is needed and there is a potential commercial application. The Commercial Materials Processing in Low Gravity Office at Marshall manages NASA’s effort under the Joint Endeavor Agreement. In the STS-7 flight, CFES will be used to run samples of dyed polystyrene latex particles to further investigate the concentration limitations of CFES in space and to calibrate the experiment hardware.  
  
NASA’s experiments are being carried out by Dr. Robert Snyder, chief of the Separation Processes Branch at Marshall. He is assisted in the study by Dr. John Sloyer, a member of Snyder’s staff. The Joint Endeavor Agreement provides that general equipment performance data and the results from NASA’s experiments using CFES will be made public.  
  
During STS experiment runs will develop data related to electrophoresis separation in six biological samples, each sample running for about ten minutes. The CFES apparatus is comprised of three equipment modules in the orbiter crew compartment middeck.  
  
The fluid systems module is installed in lieu of the galley location. It contains all fluid systems associated with control of the electrophoresis process. The flow control/conditioning subsystem of the fluid system module provides functional control of buffer and sample flow rates and system pressures, and is comprised of buffer pumps, a flow thermal electronic cooling unit and an internal cooling blower.  
  
The buffer reservoir subsystem of the fluid system module provides a depletable supply of process buffer liquid, 35 liters (9.2 gallons) and also serves as a return loop waste tank, and the other reservoir provides a fixed volume supply of process buffer 10 liters (2.6 gallons).  
  
The separation column of the fluid system module provides the equipment item within which a sample stream of biological material is separated and contains the carrier buffer/sample separation flow chamber, electrode chambers, fluid supply manifold, sample fraction collection tubing bundle and instrumentation for sensing system parameters of temperature, pressure, differential pressure, and separation chamber voltage gradients.  
  
The degassing subsystem of the fluid system module provides the removal of the hydrogen product of electrolysis generated within the cathode chamber of the separation column and is comprised of three membrane deaeration/degassing columns, vacuum systems, solenoid isolation valves, liquid sensors and a catalytic converter.  
  
The fraction collecting system of the fluid system module provides valving control of all effluent fractions from the separation column and the positioning control for sample cartridge collectors. The cartridge positioning mechanism is contained in a housing that isolates its interior from the interior of the fluid system module. A latched door on the front of the housing enclosure provides access for installing and removing sample collection cartridges for each separation run collection cycle.  
  
The fluid system module structure is equipped with gasketing to contain liquids within the fluid systems module interior in the event of system leakage. The fluid system module interior tracks cabin pressurization profiles via air exchange through hydrophobic breather panels installed in the fluid systems module enclosure panels.  
  
The sample storage module is a separate insulated enclosure mounted in the module locker area of the middeck equipped with a thermal electric cooling unit and shelving for stowing sample supply syringes and sample collection cartridges. The experiment command and monitoring module is a separate module from the fluid systems module located above the sample storage module, which provides autonomous control of the electrophoresis system and is comprised of dedicated experiment processor, power supplies computer peripherals, fusing, displays and electrophoresis to orbiter power interface connectors.  
  
The flight crew will be required to operate the experiment twice during the early portion of the flight. Each operating time lasts approximately seven hours. The total weight of all three modules and cables is 299 kilograms (660 pounds). The fluid system module is 1.8 meters (6 feet) in height and is 457 millimeters (18 inches) in width.  
  
  
NEXT  
  
The electrophoresis program is the result of the unique Joint Endeavor Agreement between McDonnell Douglas Corporation and NASA. In addition, McDonnell Douglas Corporation has an agreement with the Ortho Pharmaceutical Division of Johnson & Johnson to collaborate in studying the commercial feasibility of production in space.  
  
McDonnell Douglas anticipates that following successful experimental work, approximately six more years would be necessary before commercial operations can begin; five years would encompass product research and development, space flights to verify technology and to demonstrate a scale-up pilot plant. The additional year is to obtain final Food and Drug Administration approvals.  
  
The current Electrophoresis Operations in Space (EOS) device is scheduled to be flown three more times in the middeck of the orbiter to identify materials that might be candidates for commercial development. After the completion of these flights, McDonnell Douglas plans to install a 2,268 kilogram (5,000 pound), 4.2 meter (14 feet) long prototype production unit to be carried in the spacecraft’s payload bay on two future Space Shuttle flights. The fully automated system will have 24 separation chambers, compared with one that is flown in the middeck.   
  
Present plans call for the pilot plant demonstration in 1985 or 1986. The next step would be to install a production EOS in an Earth-orbiting satellite to be serviced by the Space Shuttle on a six-month schedule by the late 1980s. Proposed satellites under consideration include the Space Platform, the Space Operations Center, and the Multi-Mission Modular Spacecraft.

On the STS-7 flight, a 914 millimeter (36 inch) diameter Ku-band antenna is mounted on the starboard forward portion of Challenger’s payload bay. The Ku-band antenna is stowed in this area and after payload bay door opening, the Ku-band antenna is deployed. If the Ku-band antenna cannot be stowed, provisions are incorporated to jettison the assembly so the payload bay doors can be closed for entry.  
  
On the STS-7 mission, performance, navigation and proficiency tests of Challenger’s S-band system will be accomplished with TDRS-A in addition to the Ku-band system with TDRS-A.  
  
The orbiter Ku-band system operates in the Ku-band portion of the RF spectrum, which is 15,250 MHz to 17,250 MHz. The Ku-band provides a much higher-gain signal with a smaller antenna than the S-band system. The S-band system can be used to communicate via the TDRS, but the low-data-rate mode must be used because of limited power since the S-band does not have a high enough signal gain to handle the high data rate. With the Ku-band system, the higher data rates can be used.  
  
One drawback of the Ku-band system is its narrow pencil beam, which makes it difficult for the antennas on the TDRS to lock on to the signal. The S-band will be used to lock the antenna into position first because it has a larger beam width. Once the S-band signal has locked the antenna into position, the Ku-band signal will be turned on.  
  
The orbiter Ku-band system includes rendezvous radar which will be used to skin-track satellites or payloads that are in orbit. This makes it easier for the orbiter to rendezvous with any satellite or payload in orbit. For large payloads that will be carried into orbit, one section at a time, the orbiter will rendezvous with the payload that is already in orbit to add on the next section.  
  
On the STS-7 flight, Challenger will test orbiter/detached payload communications and rendezvous radar sensor performance with SPAS-01 during proximity operations.  
  
The Ku-band antenna is gimbaled, which permits it to acquire the TDRS for communications acquisition or radar search for other space hardware. The Ku-band system is first given the general location of the space hardware from the orbiter computers. The antenna then makes a spiral scan of the area to pinpoint the target.  
  
With communications acquisition, if the TDRS is not detected within the first eight degrees of spiral conical scan, the search is automatically expanded to 20 degrees. The entire TDRS search requires approximately three minutes. The scanning stops when an increase in the received signal is sensed.  
  
Radar search for space hardware may use a wider spiral scan, up to 60 degrees. Objects may be detected by reflecting the radar beam off the surface of a target (passive mode) or by using the radar to trigger a transponder beam on the target (active mode).

 **First Space Shuttle Landing at Kennedy**   
  
With an on-time launch of STS-7 on June 18 at 7:33 a.m. EDT, the planned mission  duration of approximately 5 days 23 hours and 20 minutes, which would put the landing, the first scheduled at KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility, to June 24 at about 6:53 a.m. EDT. Landing at Kennedy will help reduce turnaround times between flights significantly.  
  
The runway at Kennedy Space Center, the Shuttle Landing Facility SLF) is among the world’s most impressive in terms of length and width. The runway is 4,572 meters (15,000 feet) in length plus a 304 meter (1,000 foot) overrun at each end. The width of the runway is 91 meters (300 feet). In general terms, that makes it roughly twice as long and twice as wide as a run-of-the-mill commercial runway, and appreciably larger than the larger-than-average landing facilities at such places as London-Heathrow, Rome-Fiumicino and Los Angeles International. The concrete runway 22/04 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, matches the SLF in length and width with an overrun of eight kilometers (five miles) extending into the dry lakebed when landing on 04.  
  
The Kennedy Space Center runway on a northwest-southeast alignment is designated Runway 15 from the northwest to southeast and Runway 33 from the southeast to the northwest. The SLF is located approximately three kilometers (two miles) northwest of the 160 meter (525 feet) tall Vehicle Assembly Building. The runway required approximately 546 hectares (1,350 acres) of land area, most of it high, dry land. Its use before the lands were purchased in the early 1960s was primarily agriculture.   
  
The runway is 406 millimeters (16 inches) hick in the center with thickness diminishing to 381 millimeters (15 inches) on the sides. Underlaying the concrete paving completed in late October 1975, is a 152 millimeter (6 inch) thick base of soil cement. The concrete used in paving the landing facility required about 1,000 carloads of cement and 10,000 carloads of crushed limestone and sand aggregate. 192,679 cubic meters (252,000 cubic yards) of concrete was used in paving the runway. The landing facility was built between May 1974 and August 1976 and outfitted at a cost of $27.2 million.  
  
Some 8.450 miles of quarter-inch deep grooves, cut in a crisscross pattern along the entire length of the SLF to form countless 1.5-inch squares, together with the slope of the runway, 609 millimeters (24 inches) from centerline to edge, provide rapid drain off of any water from a heavy Florida downpour, preventing hydroplaning. Although designed specifically for the shuttle orbiter, KSC’s grooved runway can accommodate any commercial aircraft flying today or planned for the future. But it’s not only aircraft which are attracted to its surface.  
  
Apparently, the local alligator population finds it irresistible, too. Warmed through by the relentless Florida Sun during the day, the runway stays warm well into the night – providing a perfect resting place for the alligators, which must control their temperatures very carefully in order to stay alive. Before an early-morning aircraft or orbiter arrival, it is not unusual for a squad of KSC personnel to be dispatched from the Industrial Area to shepherd the lazy gators to a safe refuge in the surrounding undergrowth. From its inception, the SLF was designed as an ecological model for airfield construction and environmental impact was held to a minimum.  
  
The orbiter navigation system acquires the Microwave Scanning Beam Landing System (MSBLS) usually on or near the final leg of the heading alignment cylinder for the TAEM (Terminal Area Energy Management)/Autoland interface. The ground-based MSBLS components are located in small shelters off the west side of the runway. The two MSBLS azimuth/distance measuring equipment shelters at the far end of each runway is approximately 396 meters (1,300 feet) beyond the stop end of each end of the runway and 94 meters (308 feet) to the west of the runway’s centerline. The MSBLS azimuth/distance measuring equipment shelter sends signals which sweep 15 degrees on each side of the landing path with directional and distance data.  
  
The two MSBLS elevation stations are approximately 1,082 meters (3,500 feet) in from the runway threshold at each end of the SLF. Signals from the MSBLS shelter near the orbiter touchdown point sweep the landing path to provide elevation data up to 30 degrees. The three MSBLS system aboard the spacecraft receives these data and the spacecraft adjusts to the glide path. The two radar altimeters aboard the orbiter provide altitude information in the spacecraft when it is below 1,524 meters (5,000 feet) altitude.  
  
Approach lights point to the SLF centerline and the threshold and edge lights outline the field similar to a commercial runway. The two way from the Shuttle Landing Facility to the Orbiter Processing Facility is approximately 3.2 kilometers (2 miles).

The Kennedy Space Center is responsible for ground operations of the orbiter vehicle once it has rolled to a stop on the runway at Kennedy. Convoy activities will be identical to those performed at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The tow from the runway to the Orbiter Processing Facility is scheduled to be completed approximately three hours after touchdown.  
  
After Challenger has rolled to a stop, the flight crew will begin safing vehicle systems. At the same time, the recovery convoy will be making its way toward the vehicle. Specially-garbed technicians will first determine that residual hazardous vapors are below significant levels in order for other safing operations to proceed. A mobile wind machine is positioned near the vehicle to disperse highly concentrated levels of explosive vapors.  
  
Once the initial safety assessment is made, access vehicles will be positioned at the rear of the orbiter so that lines from ground purge and cooling vehicles can be connected to the T-0 umbilical panels on the aft end of the orbiter. Freon line connections will be completed and coolant will begin circulating through the umbilicals to aid in heat rejection and protect the orbiter's electronic equipment. Other lines will provide cool, humidified air through the umbilicals to the orbiter's cargo bay and other cavities to remove any residual explosive or toxic fumes and provide a safe, clean environment inside the Challenger.  
  
The mobile white room will be moved into place around the crew hatch once it is verified there are no concentrations of toxic gases around the forward part of the vehicle. The hatch will be opened approximately thirty minutes after landing and the flight crew will leave the orbiter about ten minutes later. Technicians will replace the flight crew in the cockpit and complete the vehicle safing activity.  
  
A tow tractor will be connected to the Challenger and the vehicle will be pulled down the two-mile long tow way leading to High Bay 1 of the Orbiter Processing Facility. Challenger will be pulled inside the hangar-like facility, jacked and leveled in the OPF work stands and facility power and cooling lines will be connected to the vehicle. Postflight inspections and inflight anomaly troubleshooting will begin the following day, in parallel with the start of routine systems reverification to prepare Challenger for the STS-8 mission.

    


	29. STS-7:processing flow and pre-launch news

For a launch on June 18, a total of 60 working days, or 64 calendar days, will have been spent preparing the STS-7 vehicle for launch. The previous record was 77 working (82 calendar) days, achieved on STS-4. Challenger was returned from California piggyback on the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and arrived at Kennedy Space Center on April 16. The orbiter was taken off the jumbo carrier jet and delivered to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) on April 17, kicking off an around-the-clock schedule that enabled the reusable vehicle to be processed for its next flight in only 35 days. Prior to this, the fastest turnaround in the Processing Facility had been 41 days on STS-4.  
  
Residual hypergolic propellants remained in Challenger's maneuvering system tanks, and some testing of systems that operated perfectly in flight was deleted from the schedule, permitting the faster turnaround. Regular postflight maintenance included leak and functional checks of the main propulsion system, subsystem checkout and servicing of consumables such as nitrogen, ammonia and potable water.  
  
One of the major areas of inspection and processing for STS-7 was the TPS on Challenger. Engineers thought that the thermal blankets, after the hottest part of the STS-6 entry, had been eroded by aerodynamic flow as the vehicle dropped below Mach 5. Further analysis of the TPS indicated that individual tile injection with waterproofing agent had to be implemented to prevent water corrosion, which had been experienced in Columbia after only five missions. Some 14,000 of Challenger’s tiles were injected, and further investigation into the blanket damage was undertaken to reveal if changes in the blanket material occurred in space or during reentry and so occasioned the damage.  
  
Damaged areas of the twin Orbital Maneuvering System pods covered with the advanced felt reusable insulation were replaced with approximately 170 white thermal protection tiles. Another 120 tiles were installed to replace ablative panels located on the elevons, and approximately 60 tiles were replaced as a result of damage from flight or as a result of normal turnaround operations.

As workers at KSC prepared Challenger for her first mission, the Payload Assist Modules for the Anik and Palapa spacecraft arrived at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 4 and Jan. 3, respectively. The Anik and Palapa spacecraft both arrived on Nov. 28. The four elements went through separate inspections and processing schedules. The satellites were mated to their upper stages in the Delta Spin Test Facility and then installed in their support cradles. The SPAS-01 payload arrived on Jan. 15. It completed its assembly and checkout operations in Hangar S, Cape Canaveral, and was moved to the Vertical Processing Facility (VPF) on April 26 for integration with other STS-7 payload elements and checkout. The Palapa/PAM was moved to the VPF on April 7, followed by the Anik/PAM on April 21.

The OSTA-2 payload arrived Jan. 3 and was assembled and checked out in the Operations and Checkout Building. The SPAS-01 platform was transferred to the VPF on April 21, and together with the two communications satellites it underwent a Cargo Integration Test Equipment CITE checkout. The OSTA-2 payload, which did not require a CITE in the VPF, was the first element of the cargo to be put into the  payload canister on May 16, and the canister was transferred to the VPF on May 18, whereupon the three major satellite payloads were installed.

The STS-7 cargo was moved to the launch site on May 23. It was then transferred into the Payload Changeout Room to await the shuttle's arrival at the pad. The Getaway Special experiments arrived on various dates, were checked out and mounted inside their respective canisters. All seven GAS cans were installed in Challenger's cargo bay on May 8.

Assembly of the STS-7 vehicle began on Feb. 9 with the stacking of the twin Solid Rocket Boosters on Mobile Launcher Platform MLP-1. Stacking of the two 45.7-m (150-ft.) tall boosters was completed on Feb. 23 and the External Tank was mated on March 2. After spending 34 days in the OPF, Challenger was moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building on May 21 and attached to its External Tank and twin booster rockets. The Shuttle Interface Test, designed to verify electrical, mechanical and data paths between mated Shuttle elements, was performed on May 24-25, followed by less than one day of preparations for the vehicle's 5.6 km (3.5 mi.) journey to the pad.

On May 26, the Space Shuttle vehicle was moved to Complex 39A by the massive crawler transporter and checks of critical pad-to-vehicle connections began that same day. Transfer of the STS-7 payload into the orbiter's cargo bay was accomplished on May 28, and was followed by a series of electrical interface checks to make sure the payload was properly linked to the spaceship.

As work continued on the pad, final preparations were hampered by thunderstorms in the KSC area, twice delaying the propellant loading preparations and, following the CDT, the replacement of a faulty Inertial Measurement Unit and No. 2 engine interfacing unit.

The Countdown Demonstration Test with the STS-7 crew members was performed on June 3 as a final demonstration of vehicle, flight software and flight crew readiness for launch. Shuttle vehicle ordnance activities, such as power-on stray voltage checks and resistance checks of firing circuits, were scheduled to pick up on June 3. Ordnance activities were to be suspended from June 6 through June 7 to load hypergolic propellants aboard the vehicle. The period from June 8-10 was reserved as contingency.

Work was to resume on June 11 with a major cleared pad activity -- a final functional check of the range safety and SRB ignition. safe and arm devices -- scheduled to be performed. Pressurization of OMS and RCS propellant and helium tanks, and servicing of orbiter fuel cell liquid hydrogen and oxygen storage tanks, which were countdown activities on previous flows, was to be conducted on June 13, followed by servicing of the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System on June 14. Closeout of OMS and RCS systems was scheduled to conclude on June 15. The 40-hour Launch Countdown was scheduled to pick up June 16. The STS-7 launch will be conducted by a joint NASA/industry team from Firing Room 1 in the Launch Control Center.

 

 **April 11** : SATCOM SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED  
Satcom I-R was launched just after 5:39 p.m. EST aboard Delta 3924 from launch pad 17B. The RCA satellite was the second of the company's advanced solid state satellites and would act as an "in-orbit spare" for other protected services, such as cablenet services and the Satcom 5 satellite launched in October 1982 to provide Alaskans with improved long-distance telephone and television service.

 **April 20** : THE TRAVAILS OF SOYUZ T-8   
Salyut 7 remained empty during the Russian winter of 1982/83 and was joined by the unmanned Cosmos 1443 module on March 10. Trained to work aboard Salyut and the new module were Vladimir Titov, Aleksandr Serebrov, making the first successive national manned spaceflight, and Gennady Strekalow. Their attempt to dock with Salyut, however, was doomed very soon after lift-off, April 20, at 7:11 p.m. local time from Baikonur, when the payload shroud tore away Soyuz T’s rendezvous radar antenna which only partially deployed. The crew used the RCS thrusters to try to shake the antenna free but to no avail. In trying to hide the serious problem, these engine firings were reported as tests of the attitude control system.  
  
Although mission rules would normally dictate a return to Earth, the rookie commander Titov got permission to try a visual rendezvous and attempted docking using radar readings from the ground. The docking was perceived as having a low success probability by the ground controllers. It could have been a complete disaster, for Soyuz T-8 flew past Salyut 7 at great speed, missing a catastrophic collision by 160 meters (525 feet). Titov had made an optically guided approach to Salyut’s rear docking port after a 50-second rocket burn.  
  
The crew, which would have been the first three-man long duration crew since Soyuz 11, came home 96 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Arkalyk on April 22 at MET 2 days 17 minutes 48 seconds.

 **April 26:** PRESIDENT REQUESTS NEW STATION STUDY  
President Reagan last week requested the Senior Interagency Group (SIG) for Space to conduct a high-level study to establish the basis for an Administration decision on whether to proceed with NASA development of a permanently based, manned space station.  
  
The interagency group, chaired by National Security Advisor Judge William p: Clark, will consider four scenarios for possible paths the nation’s space program might take flowing completion of the development of the Space Shuttle program. The scenarios include: the shuttle and unmanned satellites, the shuttle and unmanned platforms, the shuttle and an evolutionary space station, or the shuttle and a fully functional space station.  
  
The issues addressed by the study will include how a manned space station would contribute to U.S. leadership in space and how an international program could best fulfill national requirements versus other means of satisfying them. Foreign policy and national security implications, as well as overall economic and social impacts, will also be considered.  
  
A working group, chaired by NASA and including Department of State, Department of Defense and other representatives of the SIG for Space, has been established to conduct the study. Results will be presented to the SIG this fall prior to their submittal to the President.  
  
Although the Department of Defense will participate in the study, the Space Station project is seen as principally a civil space program. 

NASA believes the Space Station could be in orbit by the early 1990s. Preliminary analyses have shown a modest Space Station program could be constructed for from $4 to $6 billion.

 **April 29** : PIONEER 10 CROSSES ORBIT OF PLUTO  
Pioneer 10, a planetary probe with so many firsts to its record, became the first object from Earth to cross the orbit of the planet Pluto last week. Pioneer has traveled nearly 3.5 billion miles on its curving path across the solar system. Radio signals, moving at the speed of light, require more than four and a quarter hours to cross the vast distance between Earth and the spacecraft. NASA scientists typically send Pioneer 10 a message when they arrive at work in the morning and don’t receive a reply until quitting time.  
  
Only the planet Neptune is still farther out than Pioneer 10. Normally Pluto is the outermost planet, but for the next 17 years its highly elliptical orbit will place it nearer the Sun than Neptune. When Pioneer 10 crosses the orbit of Neptune in June, it will effectively have left the solar system.  
  
When the spacecraft crossed Pluto’s orbit April 25, it was traveling at over 30,000 miles per hour, almost 5,000 miles per hour faster than solar system escape velocity. For the Space Shuttle Challenger to cover an equal distance it would have to orbit Earth 107,690 times. At Challenger’s orbital speed of about 17,000 miles per hour, this would take over 20 years of continuous travel.  
  
The spacecraft communicates with Earth through an eight-watt radio transmitter, equivalent in power to a Christmas tree light. Despite broadcasting a narrow, conical beam, by the time the signal reaches Earth, it has spread over an area more than 11 million miles across. When the signal is received by the 210-foot radio antennas of the Deep Space Network, the original eight-watt signal has weakened to twenty thousand trillionths of a watt. If the total energy of that signal could be collected for 67 million years, it would not be enough to power a seven-and-a-half watt light bulb for even one-thousandth of a second.  
  
Among its discoveries, Pioneer 10 is credited with finding that Jupiter is a iquid planet, with providing the first accurate measurements of the masses and densities of Jupiter’s planet-sized moons, and with returning the first close-up pictures of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

 **May 4** : STS-7 LAUNCH PREPARATIONS  
Technicians continued checking out a new Ku-band antenna installed on Challenger, expected to launch June 15. The new antenna would allow the crew to communicate with the ground via NASA's sophisticated TDRS system and would also be used as a radar antenna for other orbiting satellites. KSC spokesman Jim Ball said technicians were able to shave a day off the allotted time for testing the electronic systems of three of Challenger's payloads for the upcoming STS-7 mission. The checks are performed to assure compatibility of those systems with that of the orbiter. Preparations for Challenger's fourth major cargo, the OSTA-2 onboard experimental payload, continued at the space center's Operations and Checkout Building. NASA anticipates loading cargoes aboard Challenger later this month.

 **May 5** : FREEDOM 7 REMEMBERED  
Twenty-two years ago Alan B. Shepard, Jr. became the first American astronaut to be launched into space. Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury was launched aboard a Redstone rocket at 9:34 a.m. EST from Cape Canaveral. Freedom 7 is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Today Shepard is a successful businessman in Houston, Texas; he has interests in real estate and beer distribution.

ASTRONAUTS SIMULATE PAYLOAD DEPLOY  
Astronauts Sally Ride, John Fabian and Anna Fisher took part in mission simulation exercises on the ground at Kennedy Space Center. The exercises simulated what Ride and Fabian would do to prepare one of Challenger's three major payloads for deployment during the orbiter's second-flight in mid-June. They would release Canadian and Indonesian communication satellites and operate experiments on a West German scientific pallet. Although the instruments used for the simulations were similar to those that the astronauts would encounter on the shuttle, some improvisations took place; music stands were used to hold program manuals and a sheet of foam rubber was taped up to keep glare from the astronauts' eyes. The astronauts seemed to be in good spirits during the simulations, their jokes eliciting frequent, if restrained, laughter.

 **May 10** : JUNE 18 LAUNCH DATE SET FOR CHALLENGER  
NASA announced that the launch of STS-7 would occur at 7:33 a.m. EST on June 18, 1983, 63 calendar days of processing time since the return of Challenger on the STS-6 mission. STS-7 was expected to land at KSC between 6:58 and 7:46 a.m. EST on the morning of June 24, 1983. The crew will include Bob Crippen, Fred Hauck, Sally Ride, John Fabian and Dr. Norman Thagard.  
  
A preflight press conference with the STS-7 astronauts will be conducted at 1:00 p.m. CDT Tuesday, May 24, at the Olin E Teague Auditorium, Johnson Space Center, Houston. A series of mission background briefings will begin at 1:00 p.m. CDT Monday, May 23, in the JSC News Center and continue through that afternoon and Tuesday morning.

 **May 22** : REAGAN AUTHORIZES PRIVATE LAUNCH BUSINESS   
The Reagan Administration's latest space policy initiative could bring half a dozen U.S. companies into competition with the government in the business of launching commercial satellites into orbit. The directive issued last week by President Reagan authorizes the sale to private industry of parts and plans for the government's Delta, Atlas and Titan rockets. These are the one-shot boosters that formed the backbone of the U.S. space fleet before the development of the reusable Space Shuttle.   
  
Reagan also would allow companies to lease facilities at Kennedy Space Center to launch their rockets. Several companies have long been interested in offering private launches of communications and remote-sensing satellites, but have been hampered by federal reticence and red tape.

 **May 26** : CHALLENGER ARRIVES AT LAUNCH PAD 39A  
Challenger traveled from the VAB to its launch pad three and a half miles away. The journey was begun at 12:32 p.m. EST and ended at 7:30 p.m. EST when the shuttle arrived at pad 39A and was set firmly in place – with a hard down at 8:17 p.m. Workers began checking the connections that carry propellants, gases, electricity and data to the shuttle from the ground.   
  
NASA Launch Director Al O'Hara said that one significant problem uncovered prior to Challenger's departure from the VAB should not delay the launch schedule. The glitch involved links between the orbiter and one of the twin Solid Rocket Boosters attached to the shuttle's external fuel tank. The 7:33 a.m. EST June 18 launch was not considered in jeopardy.

EXOSAT LAUNCHED FROM VANDENBERG AFB  
Today a NASA Delta 3914 launched the European X-ray Observatory Satellite from Space Launch Complex 2 West at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The launch occurred at 8:18 a.m. local time.The European Space Agency observatory will make a detailed study of the known X-ray sources in space and search for others. Exosat, a 1,125-pound satellite was lofted into a highly elliptical 119,300 x 210-mile orbit inclined 72 degrees to the equator. The unique orbit will allow for up to 80 hours of observations at a time while maintaining relatively stable thermal conditions by keeping the spacecraft in full sunlight for most of the year.  
  
Exosat’s scientific payloads include two imaging telescopes similar to those flown on the U.S. Einstein Observatory and a gas scintillator spectrometer which will be flown for the first time. Exosat will study cosmic X-ray sources in the energy range from 0.04 keV to 80keV. It has six mission objectives, which include mapping broadband spectroscopy and high-resolution spectroscopy undertaken in conjunction with the imaging telescopes aboard. Exosat was originally to have been launched on the Ariane L6 launcher but was switched to a Delta after the failure of the Ariane L5 last year.

 

On June 1, 1983, the STS-7 crew met President Reagan at the White House. “We went in and had lunch,” explained Rick Hauck. “Five of us, Gerry Griffin, who was then the head of the Johnson Space Center, Ed Meese, who was the Attorney General, Gil Rye, who was on the President’s staff. That was it, and we just sat around and had a lovely time.”   
  
John Fabian confirmed that the President seemed terrifically interested in the shuttle program and in the flight. “He paid essentially no attention to the fact that Sally was going to become this first woman to fly in space. He just assumed that everybody knew that. Let’s don’t make a big deal out of that. Let’s sit down and have lunch and enjoy ourselves. And that’s exactly what Sally would have preferred. You know, just right exactly on target.”  
  
“President Reagan couldn’t have been a more congenial person, just smiling and cracking jokes, but still asking intelligent questions about what we were doing,” continued Rick Hauck. “We said we were STS-7, and he said, _‘Contrary to most people, seven has not been a very good number for me,’_ and he read off a couple of things, whether he was defeated in his first gubernatorial election on something the seventh. And he said, _‘And John Hinckley shot me on the seventeenth’_ – or twenty-seventh of the month. I don’t think he used his name. I think he said, _‘That guy shot me,’_ and he laughed.” – Actually, the President had been shot on Monday, March 30, 1981.  
  
After having a meal together, at 1:05 p.m. EST, President Reagan and the STS-7 crewmembers met a bunch of reporters on the South Grounds of the White House.   
  
  
Reagan: _I have just had lunch with the crew of the Space Shuttle. And it was quite a lunch… squeezed it from a plastic bag. (Laughter) – No, we really didn’t. But I wanted to meet with Captain Crippen, Captain Hauck, Colonel Fabian, Dr. Ride and Dr. Thagard to let them know how much we look forward to the flight of the seventh Space Shuttle.  
  
This mission is a mission of firsts. It is the first spaceflight of an American woman, Dr. Sally Ride; the first shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center; the first launch of a five-member crew. And I know, come June 18 about 7:32 a.m., you’re also going to be first in the hearts of your countrymen. A little bit of every American will be up there with you, and needless to say, you’ll carry our pride and our prayers as you head into space.  
  
This will be the second flight of the Challenger. And, as I said to the crew of the first flight, “You genuinely are challengers.” You’re daring the future and the old ways of thinking that kept us from… or kept us looking at the heavens, instead of traveling to them. And you and that white spacecraft you fly represent the hope of the future.  
  
Now, I don’t want to delay the flight, so I won’t give a full-fledged speech. But I did want to say publicly and personally how very honored America is to have public servants of your dedication, your courage and intelligence; and, on behalf of all your fellow citizens, to wish you a very successful flight and to say Godspeed and God bless you for all that you’re doing. _  
  
Crewmembers: _Thank you, Mr. President._  
  
Question: _Mr. President, why don’t you go along with them… become the first President to go into space? (Laughter)_  
  
Reagan: _Well, I’m a little hurt, because several flights ago I asked them if they would stop and pick me up on the way to Edwards Air Force Base, and they haven’t done it. (Laughter)_  
  
Question: _(Inaudible) see the launch? (Inaudible) going to see the launch?_  
  
Reagan: _What?_  
  
Question: _Would you like to see the launch?_  
  
Reagan: _I’d like to see it, but I don’t think there’s going to be an opportunity to do that._  
  
Question: _Mr. President, are you giving up on build-down?_  
  
Reagan: _What?_  
  
Question: _Are you backing away from the build-down idea? (That means no new weapons should be deployed unless a larger number of existing weapons are destroyed.)_  
  
Question: _Does Chancellor Kohl (West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) have a role to play in setting up a (U.S.-Soviet) summit, sir?_  
  
Larry Speakes (Deputy Press Secretary): _That’s about enough._  
  
Question: _Wait. Let the man speak for himself._  
  
Question: _Let him talk, Larry._  
  
Speakes: _He doesn’t want to speak to you._  
  
Question: _You’re not the President. Who elected you? (Laughter)_  
  
Speakes: _That’s what they always tell me. I may be running._  
  
Question: _Does Chancellor Kohl have a role to play in setting up a summit?_  
  
Reagan: _Please, you’re all just welcome here. I hope it doesn’t rain on you._  
  
Sam Donaldson (ABC News): _If you go along, you can become the first spacey President. (Laughter)_  
  
Reagan: _(Inaudible)_  
  
Question: _What?_  
  
Reagan: _Sam has spoken for all who are way out. (Laughter)_  
  
  
“When we left, he gave us a jar of jellybeans. It was very nice. He was very cordial,” John Fabian recounted in his 2006 interview for the JSC Oral History Project – in fact, each of the STS-7 crewmembers received their own jar. “Ronald Reagan is not my favorite former President, but he was a charming man. He was really a charming guy. And we got to go to a state dinner after the flight, and again, more of the same. The guy was a real charmer.”  
  
Following the meeting with President Reagan in Washington, the STS-7 crew flew to Kennedy Space Center for the next stage in their preflight preparations. Mission commander Bob Crippen and flight pilot Frederick Hauck were scheduled to fly simulated shuttle landings at the spaceport's three-mile-long Shuttle Landing Facility. Following that exercise, they would be joined by fellow crewmembers John Fabian, Sally Ride and Norman Thagard to check out flight equipment. A terminal countdown test was set for June 3.

 

 **June 6** : SHUTTLE OFFICIALS STUDY ORLANDO AS ALTERNATE LANDING FACILITY  
Orlando International Airport was considered as a future Space Shuttle alternate landing facility in the event bad weather closes the KSC shuttle runway after an orbiter reentry has started toward the launch site.


	30. Interlude:the Viking spacecraft

**“** _Only 80 years ago we could come no closer to Mars than straining to see a tiny shimmering image through a telescope in Arizona. Now our instruments have actually touched down on the planet. Viking is the legacy of H.G. Wells and Percival Lowell, Robert Goddard. Science is a collaborative enterprise spanning the generations; when it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way, seeing through them also.”_  
  
\- Carl Sagan, _Cosmos: A Personal Voyage_ , Episode 5, “Blues for a Red Planet,” 1980  
  
  
Last week, controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the Viking 1 Lander on Mars, and it now appears that the mission is over. There is one more opportunity to contact the Lander on May 20. If those commands do not succeed, all possibilities for fixing the probably failures will have been exhausted. In the following article we look back at the Vikings and the lore of Mars in an attempt to pay homage to one of America’s most successful space probes.  
  
  
Both the Babylonians and the Romans, centuries apart, observed its progress across the sky and named the point of light after their respective gods of war. The Roman name stuck, and for better than 2,000 years Mars has been of particular interest of those curious among us who watch the stars.  
  
Mars became the springboard for legends of bugged-eyed monsters (the ubiquitous BEM of science fiction) and for an assortment of characters ranging from John Carter, the human “Prince of Mars,” who hacked and slashed his way across most of Tharsis, to the Martians in their terrible machines of destruction who repaid his attentions by frying Los Angeles in a war of the worlds.  
  
From fact to fiction, Mars developed a cult standing of sorts among the planets. In past ages, there was a fairly widely held belief that all of the celestial bodies out there housed life – usually intelligent and often malevolent – and great authors such as Voltaire and Jonathan Swift wrote of the adventures to be found on the shores of other worlds. Of all the planets, however, Mars tended to dominate.  
  
“It is a planet which has special connotations,” author James Michener said during a NASA-sponsored colloquium in 1976. “I cannot recall anyone ever having been as interested in Jupiter or Saturn or Pluto. Mars has played a special role in our lives, because of the literary and philosophical speculations that have centered upon it.”  
  
Henry S. F. Cooper, in his book _The Search for Life on Mars_ , traces some of those special connotations to the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, whose observations in the 1870s of the faint lines on the Martian surface – channels, or _canali_ in Italian – through misinterpretation in the English speaking world fostered the belief that a race of super engineers on Mars constructed canals to irrigate their desiccated world.  
  
Over the next two decades, this influenced the American astronomer Percival Lowell, and his influence in turn was widespread. “After his death,” Cooper writes, “planetology went out of fashion, partly because of the claims he had made, but when it became fashionable again, with the advent of the space program in the late 1950s, Lowell’s ideas had to be reckoned with once more. Though only a handful of scientists still believed in the canals, a great many still believed that Mars, with its misty Elysiums, might be covered with vegetation.”  
  
In our own times, with newer and better technologies telling us that life out in the solar system just does not exist, Mars has remained a resilient last chance for the forces of exobiology. As late as the 1970s, when the notion of Martian natives romping about in the shadow of Olympus Mons had passed from serious discussion, we were willing to settle for hardy lichens or even sturdy microbes, and indeed the possibilities were there.  
  
Based in part on that hope, and as much or more on the somewhat more prosaic desire simply to explore another planet, the United States sent a series of probes to Mars beginning in 1964 with Mariner 4, continuing with the Mariner 6, 7 and 9 spacecraft from 1969 to 1972, and culminating in the Viking probes in the mid-1970s.  
  
Viking 1 was launched August 20, 1975, and Viking 2 followed on September 9. Each consisted of an orbiter and a lander, sterilized before launch to avoid contaminating either Mars or their own biological experiments. Viking 1 arrived at Mars June 19, 1976, and the Viking 1 Lander touched down on July 20, exactly seven years after Apollo 11 reached the Moon. The site was at 22.3 degrees north latitude and 48 degrees west longitude on the western slope of Chryse Planitia, the Plains of Gold.  
  
Viking Lander 2 arrived at Mars on August 7 and touched down on September 3 at 47.7 degrees north latitude and 225.8 degrees west longitude at Utopia Planitia, the Utopian Plains.  
  
These orbiters and landers were the most sophisticated planetary explorers ever developed at the time of their launch, and in some respects they even surpassed the capabilities of our champion deep space explorers, the Voyagers (which was the original name of the Mars project).  
  
Up to last November 13, they operated far beyond their design lifetimes with few failures. Viking Orbiter 1 exceeded four years of active flight operations in Mars orbit; Lander 1 operated on the surface for almost six and one-half years. Viking Orbiter 2 was the first craft to end its mission, in July 1978, when the last of its control fuel was used up. It had operated for 718 days in orbit. Viking Orbiter 1 lasted until August 7, 1980, being shut down for the same reasons as its counterpart after 1,509 days of operations. The last data from Viking Lander 2 reached Earth in April 1980 after 1,315 days of operations.  
  
Lander 1 was to have been the last outpost. It had power, it seemed to have awesome durability and it was content to contact Earth every week or so with weather reports and a picture of the surface. It had entered the Viking Monitor Mission – its “extended mission,” what some dubbed the “eternal mission,” and it was programmed to operate through 1994.  
  
Then on November 13, after six years and 108 Earth days of mostly trouble-free operations, a catastrophic failure occurred. Whether this failure happened in the batteries or the computer system or in a cable to the communications antenna, no one is quite sure. After sending more than two million weather reports and taking a majority of the 4,500 images returned by both landers, the last Viking appears finally to have signed off.  
  
What we learned in the last six years about Mars is profound. We mapped 97 percent of the surface with a resolution of 300 meters or better, and 25 percent of the surface with a resolution of 25 meters or better. We saw fog in Martian valleys, wispy clouds streaming out from the tallest mountain in the solar system and frost on the ground. We saw evidence of massive floods and erosion caused by water, and we saw dust storms envelop the planet.  
  
We observed that the planet is dryer than any spot on Earth, and that the weather is both uniform and dull. The wintertime low was about minus 191°F, while the summertime high was a stark minus 24°F. We clocked fairly placid winds, measuring no gusts above 74 miles per hour. We discovered that the Martian atmosphere, mostly carbon-dioxide, contains some nitrogen, and we found that Martian soil is chemically very active.  
  
The most important search for many of us was that for life and here the results were more ambiguous, and were debated for several years. The general consensus from the biology experiments pointed to a dead planet. According to some Viking biologists, however, the question is still open. Three of the results indicated the Martial soil has either an agent capable of rapidly decomposing organic chemicals or that life is present. The soil did not, however, contain any organic molecules that were detectable at the parts-per-billion level.  
  
“In contrast to a few years ago, the interest among scientists today in the proposition that there might be life on Mars is virtually nil,” Cooper writes. “In evolutionary terms, the idea that life currently exists on Mars has quietly gone the way of the Great Auk. If there is no life on the one planet in the solar system which, next to Earth, had long been considered the most likely to foster it, then the search will have to shift where neither we nor our machines can easily follow.”  
  
For Viking Lander 1, that search now appears to be over, and for the first time since 1975, the clicking and whirring has ceased, and stillness has once again descended on the rocky Plains of Gold.  
  
  
In March 1983 support for the Viking Monitor Mission was terminated, and the end of one of the most successful of NASA’s planetary missions was announced on May 21. Thomas A. Mutch, the leader of the lander imaging team, died trekking in the Himalayas in 1980. The Viking 1 lander was dedicated the Mutch Memorial Station, and a commemorative plaque was made for a future astronaut to affix to the vehicle. Following his death in 2006, the Viking 2 lander was dedicated to Gerald A Soffen, the chief scientist of the Viking project.

Currently, the most ardent advocate of the possibility of life on Mars, and on a lot of other places distant from our planet, is Dr. Carl Sagan, a professor of astronomy at Cornell, who has been on the scientific teams planning several of NASA’s unmanned spacecraft missions. On August 10, 1975, the day before Viking 1 was supposed to be launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Sagan was addressing a dozen or so children seated on the hot cement near the pool of the Ramada Inn at Cocoa Beach, about twelve miles from the launching pad.  
  
A youthful man of forty-one, with long, straight black hair combed at a sloping angle across a high forehead, Sagan is a controversial figure, but most scientists will agree that if he doesn’t embody the spirit of the whole Viking enterprise he at least supplies its imagination. On this occasion, he was dressed in black bathing trunks and a maroon-and-white patterned shirt and was sitting at the edge of the pool. At his feet were a partly broken model of a Viking lander, squat and froglike, and also, cradled in a wastebasket, a ruddy-colored globe of Mars as big as a beach ball.  
  
The children, most of them under ten, were sons or daughters of Viking scientists or engineers – Sagan’s four-year-old son, Nicholas, was among them. They seemed to like Sagan, a man whose own childhood never seems far behind him; he has remained close to it and seems to draw from it a rich and playful imagery.  
  
“Here on Earth, we have pools and beach balls and hot dogs and other nice things, but if you were far away you wouldn’t see these things,” he began. “From space, the Earth would be a blue dot among lots of other dots – blue ones, green ones, brown ones, and, in particular, one big red one.” He picked up the globe of Mars. “There is snow up here and down here,” he said, touching the poles, where two holes had been punched so that the globe could revolve on a stand. “These holes don’t exist on the real planet. But there’s a giant mountain here. And here there’s another. And here’s another. And here’s a huge canyon that would stretch from New York to beyond San Francisco if it were on Earth. We know the mountains and the canyon exist because we can see them from space near Mars, but what we don’t know is what is down _on_ Mars.”  
  
Though he didn’t actually say it, he left the impression that If there actually were no hot dogs on Mars there might well be manifestations of life almost as interesting. One of Sagan’s favorite arguments is that if a few thousand years ago, before there were advanced civilizations on Earth, a spaceman from another planet had had a view of the Earth no better than the one we have of Mars he might not know that any living thing was here.  
  
“So we want to send someone to Mars to see what’s there,” he went on to the children, most of whom had recently come from such places as Hampton, Virginia; Denver, Colorado; or Pasadena and Mountain View, California – the sites of one or another of the factories, universities, and space centers where work on Viking had been going on. “We thought of sending a Martian, but we didn’t know any Martians. That’s one reason we’re going. We asked some of our friends if they could live on Mars, but none of them could. It’s too cold and too dry, and the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide instead of oxygen, like ours, and is only about one-hundredth the density of our own.”

Would you rather have Viking or an eight-year-old on Mars?” asked a boy in red bathing trunks who looked about eight. “I’d rather have an eight-year-old,” Sagan said at once. Viking may be smart, but he’s slow. If a fat Martian walks by, Dr. Anderson, the scientist in charge of the big ear, will go to Dr. Mutch, the scientist in charge of the two eyes, and say, _‘I hear something fat walking around out there.’_ Then Dr. Much will go to Mission Control and say,  _'There’s something fat walking around out there. Let’s look for it.’_   – Three days later Viking looks for it, and by that time whatever it was will have lumbered out of view.”  
  
“Another thing that Viking can’t do is reproduce. It would be nice if these two Viking landers – there are two of them, remember, each with its own orbiter overhead – could make a lot more, but they can’t. Anyway, that’s our special guy on Mars, and tomorrow he’ll go off. This is the first time something will actually land on Mars and tell us about it, so you’re very lucky.”  
  
“What if it blows up?” the boy in red trunks asked.  
“That’s one reason we have two of them,” Sagan said.  
“What if a leg falls off?” the girl with the ponytail asked.  
This had happened to the model that Sagan had in his hand.  
“Then it will have a limp – Viking with tilt,” Sagan said.  
“What if a Martian cuts off an eye?” another boy asked.  
“That will be terrific! Then the other eye will see him.”  
“What if the Martians have sophisticated weapons that blow it up?” another girl asked.  
“Then we’ll have a blown-up lander,” Sagan said. “And maybe the cameras will photograph the Martians doing this. But the Martians won’t be bad. They will either be kindly or they won’t care about us.”

With his playfulness, his ability to bring science fiction to the aid of science, and his nimble way of turning a question inside out, so that an adverse circumstance suddenly becomes an asset, Sagan alternately delights and infuriates not only children but his scientific colleagues as well.   
  
The latter don’t know quite what to make of him, for although they regard him as a good, even brilliant scientist, they have trouble coming to grips with his most distinctive quality, his imagination. Sagan is a theorist – a type of scientist who traditionally irritates many of his fellows, because he necessarily deals with what might be instead of what is. Scientists can be quite tough an colleagues who they feel speculate too much, especially in public.  
  
Sagan believes that the most important question facing mankind today is whether there is life, intelligent or not, elsewhere in the Universe; although the subject is one that is full of pitfalls, he and a large part of the scientific community have in recent years come to feel that there must be such life. As yet, there is no direct evidence for extraterrestrial life, although one biologist who is a good friend of Sagan’s, Dr, Joshua Lederberg, of Stanford University, adduces as certain proof that there is life in space one impressive set of evidence: ourselves.

Sagan is a member of what is known as the imaging team for the two Viking landers – the scientific group that will analyze the photographs sent back from the surface of Mars. He and Dr. James B. Pollack, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, are the only astronomers on that team, which is made up mostly of geologists. More important, Sagan is the only member to have a strong background in biology. Although there is a separate team of biologists, and there are three specialized instruments aboard each lander to detect microbes, Sagan believes that the cameras could well prove the most effective means of discovering life on Mars – on the principle that the surest way to discover life on Earth is to open your eyes.  
  
The cameras, he feels, will make the fewest assumptions about what life on Mars is like; the three biology instruments, in which Martian soil will be cultured to see if anything will grow, will make a number of assumptions about such things as temperature, nutrients, wetness, and metabolism. The cameras will make only one, but that, of course, is a whopper: that life on Mars will be big enough to see. Sagan is about the only Viking scientist who accepts this possibility, and he told me recently that he will make it his principal duty to search the Viking photographs for visible signs of life.   
  
It is almost beyond his colleagues’ wildest expectations to find a microbe on Mars, let alone anything larger. Most of them are conducting experiments on Mars which are much more prosaic than the task of searching the Viking photographs for visible signs of life, and it is just possible that if Sagan isn’t there to do that, no one else will.

 

It was four in the morning in Pasadena, July 4, 1976, but the mission operations area of JPL was jammed. Dignitaries and working engineers alike crowded around the video monitors, listening intently as a calm male voice on the public-address system ticked off the milestones of Viking 1’s descent through the atmosphere. “Parachute deployment… retros firing… TOUCHDOWN!” The voice lost its calmness as the announcer, and I and everyone else in the place, burst with excitement. When Viking 1 plopped onto Mars, its radio signals continued to flow clearly through to us as it carried out a prearranged robotic health check. Everything was working fine. Viking had evaded the fatal embrace of Mars’ surface that had terminated Russia’s Mars 3 landing mission four years earlier.  
  
Quickly, Viking 1’s camera lenses blinked open and began relaying, line by line, a sharp panorama of the barren, rocky, and windswept landscape in which the Volkswagen-sized lander had plunked down. No bushes, no grasses, no footprints or other indications of life relieved the barrenness of this geologically fascinating terrain. But microbial life might be waiting in the soil. The robotic arm soon started initial soil testing and sampling.

Finally, after days of gouging the Martian soil with Viking’s remote-controlled arm and of preliminary environmental measurements, the broths of the labeled-release and gas-release experiments received Martian soil samples to test. It was late in the evening in Pasadena when those biological instrument readings finally were broadcast back by Viking. Frank Colella, JPL’s press liaison, reached me at home with a stunning report.   
  
“Bruce, they’ve found something,” he said, with barely contained excitement. “You know, there are only two possibilities,” he continued, savoring a press agent’s dream of a lifetime. “Either there _is_ or there _isn’t_ life on Mars.” Then he described how the first radio indications showed a definite reaction with the tasty broth cooked up by Viking’s scientists to tempt the appetites on Martian microbes.  
  
But the chemical reaction between Viking’s “gourmet” soups and the Martian soil samples proved too strong to be true indications of microbes. Both the gas-exchange experiment and the labeled-release experiments showed changes much greater than would be expected for plausible microbial life. In fact, even oxygen gas was liberated in the reaction, as well as carbon dioxide. Something was breaking up the solvent molecules in the broth solutions aboard Viking.  
  
The Viking scientists quickly realized that the nutrient soup was reacting chemically with the Martian soil itself. They had discovered a chemical rather than a biochemical reaction. This was eventually demonstrated by my Caltech colleague Norm Horowitz’s experiment. It, too, showed peculiarities, but of much lower magnitude, because it did not involve the use of water. As most planetary geologists recognized, the present minerals in the Martian soil probably had never encountered liquid water before being submerged in Viking’s experiment (regardless of what may have happened to Mars’ surface billions of years ago).  
  
Finally, definite results arrived from the Gas Chromatograph / Mass Spectrometer. Despite the most careful searching with soil samples from the Viking 1 and the Viking 2 sites, not a single organic molecule was detected by the supersensitive GCMS. Mars’ soil is far more sterile than any environment on Earth. It would serve as an excellent standard for sterile controls in terrestrial biological laboratories.  
  
My constant concern about taking the great leap to direct biological tests turned out to be justified. Early, and inexpensive, soil chemistry test would have confirmed that life in any form that we could recognize or even imagine is not possible on Mars. The expensive direct biological tests of Viking would have been avoided.

For his part, Carl Sagan and a handful of others still cling to a hope that life now exists on the surface of Mars despite Viking’s negative results. Virtually all other space scientists dismiss such hopes as unrealistic, and many regard them as a needless obstacle to serious future work on Mars. But nearly all do agree that many billions of years ago Mars had an aqueous environment. Ancient life is not ruled out by Viking’s findings. 

We can search for a fossil chemical ecology surviving from those ancient times as organic traces, or even as biogenic calcium carbonate deposits. In principle, such chemical traces of an ancient Martian biosphere might still be preserved on Mars somewhere beneath its incredibly oxidizing outer skin. Eventually, robotic or human explorer will drill in search of such sites, which could tell us whether Mars was once a starting point of life.  
  
Mars is the planet of the future. It will constitute a playing field for the adventuresome members of future generations.

 

The Viking exploration of Mars is a mission of major historical importance, the first serious search for what other kinds of life may be, the first survival of a functioning spacecraft for more than an hour or so on any other planet (Viking 1 has survived for years), the source of a rich harvest of data on the geology, seismology, mineralogy, meteorology and half a dozen other sciences of another world.   
  
How should we follow up on these spectacular advances? Some scientists want to send an automatic device that would land, acquire soil samples, and return them to Earth, where they could be examined in great detail in the large sophisticated laboratories of Earth rather than in the limited microminiaturized laboratories that we were able to send to Mars. Although it would be fairly expensive, such a mission is probably within our technological capability.  
  
There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and discoveries this heterogeneous planet holds for us. My most persistent emotion in working with the Viking lander pictures was frustration at our immobility. I found myself unconsciously urging the spacecraft at least to stand on its tiptoes, as if this laboratory, designed for immobility, were perversely refusing to manage even a little hop.  
  
How we longed to poke that dune with the sample arm, look for life beneath that rock, see if that distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the four sinuous channels of Chryse. For all the tantalizing and provocative character of the Viking results, I know a hundred places on Mars which are far more interesting than our landing sites.

The ideal tool is a roving vehicle carrying on advanced experiments, particularly in imaging, chemistry and biology. Prototypes of such rovers are under development by NASA. They know on their own how to go over rocks, how not to fall down ravines, how to get out of tight spots. It is within our capability to land a rover on Mars that could scan its surroundings, see the most interesting place in its field of view and, by the same time tomorrow, be there. Every day a new place, a complex, winding traverse over the varied topography of this appealing planet.  
  
Such a mission would reap enormous scientific benefits, even if there is no life on Mars. We could wander down the ancient river valleys, up the slopes of one of the great volcanic mountains, along the strange stepped terrain of the icy polar terraces, or muster a close approach to the beckoning pyramids of Mars. The largest are three kilometers across at the base, and one kilometer high – much larger than the pyramids of Sumer, Egypt or Mexico on Earth. They seem eroded and ancient, and are. Perhaps, only small mountains, sandblasted for ages. But they warrant, I think, a careful look.  
  
Public interest in such a mission would be sizable. Every day a new set of vistas would arrive on our home television screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The journey would be long, the rover obedient to radio commands from Earth. There would be plenty of time for good new ideas to be incorporated into the mission plan. A billion people could participate in the exploration of another world.

 

One day astronauts will make the long journey to Mars. When they step out of their spacecraft onto the red Martian soil, they will become the first human beings to visit another planet. This expedition will extend our presence farther into the solar system. It will be the adventure of a lifetime.  
  
Astronauts will explore Mars the way scientists explore remote areas of Earth. Over many missions, they will plunge shovels into dry riverbeds and chip rocks from steep canyon walls. They will drive buggies over windswept dunes and hike across lava fields and up the slopes of extinct volcanoes. They will drill seep into the frozen grounds for traces of subsurface water. If robot scouts have located ancient hot springs, astronauts will scour these sites for rocks and minerals that may contain microscopic evidence of life.  
  
Earth and Mars share a common beginning. But the two planets evolved very differently. Why did Mars follow one path while Earth followed another? As we investigate the mysteries of Mars, we are also learning things that help us understand our own planet and how it came to be the oasis that we know today.


	31. STS-7:countdown

**June 15** : STS-7 CREW READY TO GO  
Challenger's flight crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center and expressed their readiness for June 18th's planned 7:33 a.m. EDT launch of the Space Shuttle. Meanwhile, launch crews are set for the call to stations, scheduled to be made at 3:00 a.m. EDT, June 16, kicking off the final countdown to lift-off, which will be another 52 hours 33 minutes away; the actual count will last for 40 hours with built-in holds totaling 12 hours 33 minutes – a useful reduction from the 93-hour count on STS-6.  
  
Flying into the three-mile-long Shuttle Landing Facility runway at about 5:40 p.m. EDT, the five-person STS-7 crew - consisting of commander Bob Crippen, pilot Rick Hauck, and mission specialists Sally Ride, John Fabian, and Norman Thagard - was greeted at the spaceport by a contingent of media representatives and NASA personnel.   
  
The crew had few words for the press. "I appreciated such a large group coming out today. We’re looking forward to it and if we keep beautiful weather like this we’re certainly ready to go on Saturday,” Crippen reassured reporters. “I think the Kennedy launch team has done a super job once again and proven that they can turn around a vehicle faster than we’ve ever done it before. And we’re looking forward to getting airborne just as soon as we can."   
  
“Sure good to be back and I look forward to being back in about nine days… or maybe ten,” said Challenger pilot Rick Hauck. Mission Specialist Sally Ride agreed, “Rick said that pretty well. I don’t think I can add anything. Sure thank you all for coming out.”   
  
“It’s always been good to come to KSC,” explained John Fabian, “but I think we have special reasons for thinking this is a little bit better than normal. Thanks a lot.” Medical Doctor Norm Thagard, who grew up in Jacksonville, added, “It’s good to be home in Florida and although I usually hate to leave it, I guess I’ll be glad to leave it at least on Saturday. It’s good to be here.”  
  
Weather-watchers predicted good conditions for the launch - low, scattered clouds in the 2,000-foot to 6,500-foot altitude range, light and variable winds, temperatures around 73, and no thunderstorms expected - according to Air Force spokesman Don Engel. For about two hours after dark, workers practiced a simulated rescue operation on the KSC runway using the mock shuttle cabin built for such tests.

SPACE TELESCOPE FACILITY DEDICATED  
NASA, Johns Hopkins University and European Space Agency officials gathered in Baltimore June 15 for the dedication of the Space Telescope Science Institute, scheduled to go into operation in the summer of 1986. The facility, a sandstone and dark glass structure built into the side of a ravine, was constructed by Johns Hopkins and the state of Maryland. The facility will house an interconnected computer network and will serve as the central research center for images and data returned from the Space Telescope. The telescope is now tentatively scheduled for launch aboard STS-34 in March 1986 on the shuttle Challenger.

 **June 16** : ARIANE L6 LAUNCH A FULL SUCCESS  
The European Space Agency’s Ariane L6 rocket successfully launched from the ELA-1 site at Kourou, French Guiana, at 8:59 a.m. local time, and placed two communications satellites into a geosynchronous transfer orbit of 200 x 35,873 kilometers, at an inclination of 8.6 degrees. The rocket carried a 1,043-kilogram European Communications Satellite, ECS-1, and a 155-kilogram West German amateur radio satellite, called AMSAT P3-B/Oscar 10.   
  
L6 was the second operational flight of the European launch vehicle. It followed the four launches carried out under the development program, on the conclusion of which the Ariane 1 rocket was declared flight-qualified, and the first operational launch, L5, last September 9, which did not achieve its mission. Two satellites were lost when the third-stage motor failed 560 seconds after lift-off.  
  
The secondary mission goal of Ariane L6 was the inflight demonstration of the SYLDA structure (Système de Lancement Double Ariane), which allows for two satellites to be placed inside the nose cone of the launcher and, after shutdown of the third stage, to be released independently from each other.   
  
After cut-off of Ariane’s third-stage motor, the attitude control system of the stage oriented the two SYLDA-carried satellites in the desired directions after spinning them up to 10 rpm. The upper satellite, ECS-1, was the first to be separated from the top of SYLDA fifteen minutes and 41 seconds after lift-off. A couple of seconds later, the upper half of the structure was ejected, releasing AMSAT, which left the rocket’s third stage after another minute and 58 seconds. In the case of L6, separations took place in different directions, with distancing velocities imparted by separating springs.  
  
The fact that several Delta-class payloads – which take up about half of the Ariane’s capability – are scheduled for launch, and the desire to make Europe’s launcher more competitive, led to the decision to build a structure that could accommodate and release two independent satellites. The development of SYLDA was started by ESA in June 1978.  
  
The SYLDA consists of a support structure and three separation systems – one for each satellite and one for the structure itself. In its baseline configuration it offers the upper satellite the same volume as is available to an STS/PAM-D satellite; the lower satellite can be similar in size to the upper satellite, i.e. to ECS-1 for the L6 launch. The mechanical and electrical interfaces at the separation plane are the same for both satellites, and identical to those specified for the PAM-D. Cut-outs or doors in the SYLDA structure provide access to the lower satellite. Separation is provided by orthodox Marman clamp bands released by pyrotechnically-operated bolt cutters.  
  
The structure is made of an aluminum honeycomb core, covered with carbon-fiber layers. Use of this advanced technology results in a rigid and light structure, weighing about 185 kilograms. It is bolted onto the conical structure of Ariane’s equipment bay in place of the vehicle’s standard payload adapter. As this standard adapter weighs 44 kilograms, the payload penalty resulting from the double-launch system is some 141 kilograms, leaving 1,640 kilograms of mass in transfer orbit for the two satellites on the Ariane 1 version.  
  
This first successful launch with SYLDA demonstrates Ariane’s flexibility in use and its ability to meet market requirements. The sixth launch of the three-stage Ariane is considered a “crucial boost” to Europe’s space program as a way to break the superpower monopoly on space. Ariane faces competition from the U.S. Space Shuttle and from private companies planning to buy conventional Thor, Atlas, and Titan vehicles from the U.S. government. ESA is counting on enough business for everyone, but admits that Ariane would have had trouble getting any if this sixth launch had failed.


	32. STS-7:launch day

**Saturday, June 18, 1983 (Launch Day) – E-Ticket Ride**  
  
PAO: _This is shuttle launch control, at T-3 hours and counting. The astronaut flight crew of Bob Crippen, Rick Hauck, John Fabian, Sally Ride and Norman Thagard are presently in the room in the astronaut quarters ready for breakfast. Commander Bob Crippen is in the center of the group, all of them wearing striped T-shirts this morning._  
  
Bob Crippen, commander of the seventh flight of the Space Shuttle will be the first astronaut to have flown on the shuttle for the second time. He was pilot on the first Space Shuttle launch just slightly more than two years ago. Born in Beaumont, Texas, he grew up in nearby Porter. He’s a Captain in the U.S. Navy, married, and has three daughters. Crippen has also been selected as the commander of the STS-13 crew, which will be the first mission to recover an ailing spacecraft from orbit… the Solar Maximum Mission.  
  
Seated on his left is Mission Specialist Sally Ride, who will be the first U.S. woman to fly into space. Dr. Ride emphasizes she’s a Mission Specialist and scientist who happens to also be a woman. Seated at the end of the table is Rick Hauck, who is the pilot on this mission. He joined the astronaut corps in 1978 after a distinguished career as a naval aviator. He served in Vietnam and was named the Outstanding Navy Test Pilot in 1972.  
  
A number of other people joining the astronauts for breakfast, which has a large cake with the patch which was designed especially for the STS-7 crew, which is always baked by the manager of the astronaut office here at the Kennedy Space Center, Nancy Gunner.

_PAO: This is shuttle launch control, T-2 hours 28 minutes 15 seconds and counting… and our astronaut crew has just left their crew quarters, moving into the elevator to come down to the first floor of the O &C building for their trip to the pad. Commander Bob Crippen leading the way and everybody crowding into the elevator so that they can get down to the bottom…. the… just prior to that the NASA Test Director said that here would be another checkpoint. He asked everybody to look at their criteria and that he’ll be getting back to them prior to the actual time when the crew goes onboard. But at this point there are no constraints to the launch. A number of employees flashing their cameras as the crew comes out led by Commander Bob Crippen… John Fabian, the tallest of the group, once quite worried that he was too tall to be an astronaut; with the new spacecraft that’s not a problem… Dr. Norman Thagard bringing up the rear has the distinction of being the first medical doctor to fly into space… And the crew will be going out to the pad in a recreational vehicle… type vehicle this time. The last trip of the old astrovan which has taken astronauts to the pad for many years has been completed now. The crews are getting larger and there’s no longer room to accommodate everybody as necessary… the door is now being closed… This is an interim astrovan and it will be replaced in the future. This is the largest crew… one of the firsts on the STS-7 mission is the size of the crew which at five is the largest one to have flown so far. But that number is going to be going up to seven, possibly more, on future flights… The van pulling away from the O&C building where the astronaut quarters are located…Commander Bob Crippen now in the white room, putting his Snoopy-head on, and then he’ll be putting on his launch and entry helmet. During the first few flights of the shuttle a full pressure suit was needed and so the helmets attached to that suit. However, nowadays only coveralls are used plus a special harness which is used for restraint in emergencies and… Commander Bob Crippen being brushed off with a whisk broom … and now his shoes being wiped off so that he doesn’t track any dirt into the clean interior… and he has just padded this suit technician on the back and is now entering the orbiter Challenger… Pilot Rick Hauck moving into the area, shaking hands with the technicians up there prior to putting on his vest. And he’ll be the second one to enter the orbiter for the seventh mission of the Space Shuttle. The countdown clock at T-2 hours 5 minutes 30 seconds and counting, this is shuttle launch control._

PAO: _Of course the focus of media attention around the world has been on Dr. Sally Ride, who emphasizes that she is a Mission Specialist and a scientist who just also happens to be a woman. However, as the first woman to fly in space aboard a U.S. spacecraft history is undoubtedly going to focus on that as well as her accomplishments to date, such as a doctorate in physics from Stanford University. She is married to Dr. Steven A. Hawley, who also is an astronaut. And she was also selected in 1978 and served as Capsule Communicator for the STS-2 and STS-3 missions. During this mission she’s going to have a number of vital tasks to perform, such as launching the Palapa satellite and deployment and recovery of the SPAS-1_ _spacecraft – honors that she’ll share with fellow Mission Specialist John Fabian. Dr. Thagard has the distinction of being the first medical doctor to fly. And he will be taking a close firsthand look at the effects of motion on the… on humans in space. Prior to become… starting his medical studies he had been a naval… had been a Captain in the Marine Corps and a naval aviator, flying 163 combat missions in Vietnam. He then came back to the States and took his doctor of medicine degree from Texas southwestern Medical School in 1977 and was an intern when he learned of the call for new astronauts and was selected for that program in 1978 also._

Jane Pauley (NBC/KSC): _And this is it. We’re ready and waiting to hear that go for launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the Space Shuttle Challenger approaches a historic flight. It is by the clock T-20 minutes; we’re in a ten-minute hold and you’re watching a live picture of the orbiter poised and ready on Pad 39A. After six lift-offs this… well, it’s almost commonplace. Except that today there is a woman aboard, and she’s ready to take her place in history – Dr. Sally Ride, soon to become America’s first woman in space. And good morning from Cape Canaveral, I’m Jane Pauley at the Kennedy Space Center with astronaut Dick Scobee. And first of all, we saw the clock say T minus 20; I said there was a ten-minute hold. How do we get from those 20 minutes by the clock to 7:33, which is our expected launch time?_

       
Dick Scobee (NASA/KSC): _Well, Jane, the 20-minute hold is set up to give… to keep people time if there’s any problems in the launch countdown to take care of, that kind of thing.  Coming out of this 20-minute hold, they will mode the onboard computers into the flight configuration; in other words, we’ll go from ground operations to flight operations mode. And that’s what happens coming out of the 20-minute hold… and then when we count down to nine minutes, and at nine minutes you’ll get the go for launch._  
  
Pauley: _Is there any turning back at that point?_  
  
Scobee: _Yes, you can still go into hold to turn back. The place where it’s very difficult to turn back the clock, if you will, is after the APUs are started at five minutes; then the consumables are limited. You’d either have to get it off the pad or shut down the APUs and recycle it, and that takes some time._    
  
Pauley: _Looking at it it’s a magnificent dawn, but the reason it’s magnificent is there are some clouds in the skies. Is this a good day for flying?_  
  
Scobee: _Uh, it looks like a good day for flying. The clouds are breaking up, and this is kind of a normal weather pattern for the Cape. You really just need scattered clouds, and if you look out towards the shuttle landing site off to our right then you’ll see that the clouds are fairly well broken up. There are a few scattered clouds out there, so it’s probably a very good day for a launch._

     Pauley: _Well, things do look pretty good, now 18 minutes and counting. NBC News science correspondent Bob Bazell has been monitoring the activity inside the orbiter and he gives us a report as well on what NASA hopes to accomplish with this mission._  
  
Robert Bazell (NBC/KSC): _Jane, good morning. I’m over here in the press area where thousands of reporters are prepared to cover this mission. Even though this is the seventh flight of the Space Shuttle it has a lot of firsts and the crew has one of the busiest schedules they’ve ever had on any shuttle mission. (…) And Jane, to me that’s one of the most exciting things about this mission – the fact the spaceship will be coming back to the same place from which it left. That means… in terms of the history of space exploration, I think that’s a very big moment – no more splashdowns in the ocean, or out in the Siberian desert, or even a landing at an Air Force base in California – coming right back to where they left. Jane?_  
  
Pauley: _Thank you, Bob. And we continue to wait for launch; the count now sixteen minutes to launch – but that will factor in another ten minutes of holds, so it’s not literally sixteen minutes. We are watching the clock for you. – I’m told that some 100 million people will be watching this launch courtesy of NBC and some other networks, Bob Bazell over at the press site with literally hundreds of press people from not only this country but around the world. And the reason they are here, well let’s face it, it’s Dr. Sally Ride – the fact that America is putting its first woman in space has given this seventh launch of the Space Shuttle some particular interest. Dick, I know you aren’t directly responsible for Sally’s publicity, but I know everybody at NASA has been a little overwhelmed by the interest that this one woman has generated, right?_  
  
Scobee: _Well, it’s kind of like a first flight thing for a lady to fly the first time; it’s unique, differently interesting, so therefore you carry a lot of media interest and it has caused this little… in NASA a little bit of consternation, because it’s hard to pick and choose what Sally has to do and trade that off with her crew training and things like that, and I think it makes it very difficult for her. She’s a very noble person and handled it very well._  
  
Pauley: _Well, this is certainly not showbiz. This is very serious business. But it’s also extremely exciting. And there’s a man here who has… well, he has virtually seen it all. He’s not a technician, he’s an artist. His name is Bob McCall. He’s been sketching the space program since NASA was born in the late 50s. And you’ve probably seen a lot of his work (…) and he’s working even as we speak. Bob, can we say good morning? ... Bob McCall, can you hear me? … Well, there’s a busy man. He’s not listening, he’s looking at his watch and he’s painting and doesn’t hear what I’m saying. He has seen countless launches and he has painted and sketched the astronauts. And I don’t know whether it is space that inspires this man or the astronauts. Maybe a little bit later we can get back to Bob McCall. I’d like to ask him if astronaut Sally Ride is as heroic a figure to him as some of the original astronauts were when he was first so taken. And you can see what he’s working on. What’s he doing – is that in water colors? Well, we’ll see more of that a little bit later…_

     Pauley: _Dick, how did you get taken by the space program? I don’t know if the rest of us can explain what made our hearts rush – but you’re a pilot._    
  
Scobee: _Well, it was basically a natural progression… I was test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California and it was a natural progression from what I was doing into what I’m doing now. And it was just kind of a nice thing._  
  
Pauley: _When will you get a ride on the orbiter?_  
  
Scobee: _Flight 11 or 12, which is supposed to go next April._  
  
Pauley: _How much do you know? – I think, a little bit later when we closer, I’m gonna ask you specifically what’s going to be happening. I’m gonna ask you questions like “What’s it feel like?” – And you gonna give me answers…_  
  
Scobee: _I’m gonna give you answers, but it’s gonna be based on crew debriefings and simulations that I’ve been in, not on actually having flown. So, the realism… I don’t have the realism that somebody that has flown has._  
  
Pauley: _Do you have to experience it or can NASA simulate fairly accurately the sights and the sounds… and the shivers and shakes?_  
  
Scobee: _According to crews the simulation we have is very good. It does a nice job with simulating what goes on. But like in any simulation, there are a lot of things that you can’t do real accurately, and so it has some shortcomings. But I think that you have to have been there and done something like that to have a really good feeling for what goes on._  
  
Pauley: _The description you get most often coming back – is this moment a little frightening even for the trained experts?_  
  
Scobee: _No, I don’t think “frightening” is the word. You’ll end up with a little apprehension any time you’re going to do something like this. If somebody is going to light a six-and-a-half-million pound candle under you and send you off into space it’s got to be exciting. But there’s some apprehension involved. And I think the apprehension is that you don’t want to fail yourself or the program or anything else. You want to do everything right and make sure, if something goes wrong during the ascent or something like that, that you perform correctly and do everything you’re supposed to do._  

 

“This is as smooth a count as I remember,” Flight Director Jay Greene told reporters during his change-of-shift news conference later that morning. “We had two problems which we worked through the count, both weather.” Right up until the hour of launch, clouds literally hung over Challenger's departure. Rain showers spotted off the Cape Canaveral coast failed to stop the mission, but dark clouds hovering above the shuttle's beachside launch site threatened to hide most of the rocket's initial trajectory.  
  
“We had a little bit of rain at KSC mainly to the north of the pad,” said Greene. Just to make sure conditions were safe, senior astronaut John Young and NASA test pilot Charlie Walker flew simulated shuttle landings at KSC's runway right up to the time of liftoff. Astronaut Dave Walker was also in the air in a T-38 jet trainer.  
  
“The rain never amounted to very much. We only got a verbal report from John Young who was flying the STA,” explained Jay Greene. “It did not impact the launch. It might have caused us some concern had we had to do an RTLS to go to the 3-3 end of the runway instead of 1-5 as we had planned, but no impact on the KSC side.” The clouds cleared just before lift-off.  
  
At the same time, at Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa, weather conditions improved just enough to make an emergency landing there a safe possibility were it to be needed. “We were tracking some potential weather problems at Dakar, our trans-Atlantic abort site,” said Greene. “We were predicting low ceilings and fortunately the forecast and the actual weather were quite a bit apart. At launch time we had something like three-tenths cloud cover and good visibility out to about six miles. We were able to commit to a launch with all our sites available and full abort capability.”  
  
  
Christopher Glenn (CBS/KSC): _… The Vehicle Assembly Building here at the Kennedy Space Center is the tallest in Florida, and an excellent place to eyeball the entire spaceport. Spencer Allen paid a visit up there…_  
  
Spencer Allen (CBS/KSC): _Sunrise came at 6:24 this morning and by now the Cape area is bathed in early-morning sunlight. There are some scattered clouds at 2,500 feet, with a high overcast at 18,000 feet according to the latest Air Force weather briefings. Wind is out of the northeast at seven knots and visibility is seven miles. So we are well within the weather parameters here for a launch. Astronaut John Young has been making simulated approaches at the Kennedy landing strip in a jet trainer; his reported wind conditions and visibility are cranked into the computers right up to launch time. So, from the top of the Vehicle Assembly Building all things appear to be go…_  
  
Glenn: _Alright, Spencer. Challenger will be landing on that runway that Spencer Allen described next Friday; it’s the first time that the landing is taking place here in Florida – at least that is the plan at this point. But that familiar desert landing site at Edwards Air Base in California is available for contingencies and emergencies, and newsman John Goodman is there…_  
  
John Goodman (CBS/EAFB): _Should an emergency landing be necessary this morning the weather should be excellent.  The nighttime sky is clear now. There are scattered clouds at 25,000 feet; visibility at sunrise will be seven miles. Winds across the Mojave Desert are out of the southwest at ten to fifteen knots. The temperature: 65 degrees. A mini convoy of NASA technicians has been standing by for over  an hour for a possible landing here. If there is an Abort Once Around the Challenger would land during the grey dawn on concrete runway 22; after that Challenger, Chris, would use dry lakebed runway 15 or 23._

 

_Rick Moore (CNN/Atlanta): _We’ve just entered a countdown milestone; the Challenger is in its last 10-minute holding pattern, and here is CNN science editor Kevin Sanders in New York with more…_  
  
Kevin Sanders (CNN/New York): _Thank you, Rick. Here we are with Jack Lousma, our expert throughout this seventh mission. You were on Shuttle 3. At this point, with about 18 minutes to go, I think, before the scheduled launch… what’s happening in the cabin? You are just sitting, waiting, twiddling your thumbs or a lot of work to be done at this stage, too?_  
  
Jack Lousma (NASA/New York): _No, at this point everything is pretty well ironed out and things are hopefully running smoothly. You have a few odds and ends that you have to take care of, listening to the controllers on the loop giving you some instructions. But basically it’s just a pondering of what’s about to happen and getting your mind ready to react when things go right and when they don’t._  
  
Sanders: _(…) And at this stage, I guess, the only thing that everybody is looking at is the weather, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem either, right?_  
  
Lousma: _A few low clouds, but not bad._  
  
Sanders: _(…) It’s a little cloudy there. Is that going to affect whatever it is we see or not see from the actual launch itself?_  
  
Lousma: _It’s good. As the bird goes through the cloud layer, of course, we can lose it. It all depends on the angle of the cameras against the clouds there. We’ll have to wait and see._  
  
Sanders: _So at this stage, of course, the pace of the events is quickening although it’s not obvious from the picture which in fact looks quite desolate, because at this point, of course, at this stage of preparations for launch everybody has moved away from the area for some miles._  
  
Lousma: _The closest people, other than the crew, are about a mile away – a little rescue team. The crew is out there by themselves; the white room is about to being swung away clearing the shuttle for vertical launch right past the tower. So, they are out there by themselves…_  
  
Sanders: _Now, Crippen is in the cockpit; Young apparently is as usual checking out the landing situation – is that right?_  
  
Lousma: _John Young is out flying the shuttle training airplane, making approaches to the runway at the Cape there to ensure that the weather is still acceptable for a landing in the event that we have to come back and make a return to the launch site._  
  
Sanders: _Well, we’re hearing in the background there the now familiar voice of Hugh Harris of Mission Control. And he can bring us up to date with exactly what is going on now as we are watching this scene now at Kennedy for the 7:33 Eastern (Daylight) Time launch of Shuttle Seven today…_  
  
PAO (Hugh Harris/KSC): _… Of the seven Getaway Specials there’s a series of five experiments selected in a nation-wide competition among high school students in West Germany, sponsored by the Kayser-Threde organization, a small aerospace company (…) Launch Director Al O’Hara has spoken to the crew, and now Dick Smith is speaking to them, saying that he hopes that they have a safe trip and Godspeed and that we’ll have a red carpet rolled out for them when they return…_  
  
Sanders: _As I was saying there’s a big contingent of foreign journalists for this mission, particularly from Indonesia, Canada and Germany; it is very much an international mission this one…_  
  
Lousma: _It certainly is. In addition there are those from several other European countries, from the European Space Agency, who are represented as well…_  
  
PAO: _…we are at T-9 minutes and holding, looking for a lift-off on-time at 7:33 this morning. This is shuttle launch control._  
  
Sanders: _Hugh just announced that there is a nine-minute hold; we are in a nine-minute hold now. This is the last chance to make whatever modifications, adjustments of refinements before the actual final countdown._  
  
Lousma: _Well, actually we can go into a hold at any time, Kevin. This is the place where you like things to go smoothly from here on, because if we have to turn around it would take us a whole day to do so at this point. So now we are in a ten-minute hold and it will pick up very shortly, starting at nine minutes counting on time.__

 

 __PAO: _T-9 minutes and counting. The launch events are now being controlled by the ground launch sequencer from now up until the T-25 second point where they switch to the onboard redundant set launch sequencer. The ground launch sequencer is part of the launch processing system and operates by relaying commands to the orbiter’s onboard computers which then report back to the launch processing system that the commands have been executed. The primary job of the computers is to check that all of the launch commit criteria, such as the propellant loads, temperatures, pressures and other measurements are proper.__  
  
The Landing and Recovery Director has ordered the chase planes to take off… T-8 minutes and counting, everything proceeding smoothly to an on-time lift-off of 7:33…The liquid oxygen fill and drain valve in the External Tank has been closed and topping of that tank completed. Liquid oxygen drain back has been started; this means that liquid oxygen is draining, is flowing back through the Main Propulsion System into the large storage tank to cool the systems down slowly to 270 degrees below zero so that they won’t be shocked by the torrent of super cold fluid at the time of engine ignition._

__Coming up on the six-minute point in our countdown, we have the Auxiliary Power Unit prestart underway now. Pilot Rick Hauck performing that. T-6 minutes and counting… T-5 minutes 50 seconds and counting… Pilot Rick Hauck has completed the APU prestart and says they’re ready to go. T-5 minutes 30 seconds and counting; the flight recorders are on. The flight recorders provide measurements of the shuttle system performance during the entire mission for playback after landing.__  
  
Just fifteen seconds away from APU start. This is a major milestone because we have a very limited amount of propellant to run those, so there’s a limited amount of hold time there. T-5 minutes and counting, and we have a go for APU start… The APUs provide hydraulic power to move the aerosurfaces and the main engines for steering onboard. T-4 minutes, 40 seconds and counting. The firing circuit for the Solid Rocket Booster ignition and the range safety destruct devices has been armed, and we have APU start complete. 

__T-4 minutes, 20 seconds and counting, the main fuel valve heaters have been turned off in preparation for engine start. The main engines on the orbiter will actually start at T-6.8 seconds. It takes about three seconds for them to reach 90 percent thrust, at which time the solid rocket ignition sequence starts. T-4 minutes and counting. The astronaut crew has closed the visors on their launch and entry helmets, and the final helium purge of the orbiter’s main engines has started to ensure that there is no surplus hydrogen or oxygen in the area at the time of ignition. T-3 minutes, 40 seconds. The elevon, speed brakes and rudder are being moved through a preprogrammed pattern to ensure that they are capable of doing their jobs during the launch. T-3 minutes, 25 seconds. The shuttle is now on internal power. However, the fuel cells are still receiving their fuels from the ground launch equipment for another minute. The profile check of the aerosurfaces is complete and verified, and they are in launch position. The engine gimbal, the movement check of the main engines, is underway to ensure they are ready to control. T-3 minutes and counting. The liquid oxygen valve for filling the External Tank is closed and pressurization has begun. After the tank is pressurized, hold capability is limited to three minutes and 36 seconds. T-2 minutes, 40 seconds. The gaseous oxygen vent arm is being retracted and the fuel cell supply of oxygen and hydrogen has been terminated, the vehicle now on its onboard supply._ _

__T-2 minutes, 15 seconds and counting. The main engines have been moved to start position. The astronauts have cleared the caution and warning memories of their onboard computers and verified there are no unexpected errors. Oxygen vent arm moving away. T-2 minutes and counting. The liquid hydrogen vent valve has been closed now and flight pressurization is underway. T-1 minute, 45 seconds. The computer will automatically verify the readiness of the main engines at the T-1 minute point. Coming up on the 90-second point in our countdown. T-1 minute, 30 seconds and counting. Everything going smoothly here at the Kennedy Space Center and waiting for the beginning of the flight of STS-7. T-1 minute, 15 seconds and the liquid hydrogen tank is at flight pressure. T-1 minute and the firing system for the sound suppression water system on the pad is on. T-55, the hydrogen igniters under the orbiter’s engines have been armed. These devices are used to ensure that hydrogen flowing through the engines does not accumulate causing a small explosion in pulse or pressure pulse at engine ignition. T-35 seconds, we’re just a few seconds away from switching command to the onboard computers. We’ve gone for auto sequence start. T-25 seconds and counting. The sequencer onboard now controlling the final seconds… T-17 seconds and counting; the body flap and speed brake are in launch position… T-10… 9… 8… 7… 6… we go for main engine start…We have main engine start… and ignition… and lift-off. Lift-off of STS-7 and America’s first woman astronaut… and the shuttle has cleared the tower._ _

 

**Author's Note:**

> The permission:
> 
> Of course you can. - Good idea.
> 
> Ares67 
> 
> Sent to: Finn Mac Doreahn on: Today at 12:58 AM
> 
> (that’s my other username)


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